Learn English – Colon Before a List of Questions

This may be more of an extended comment than an answer, but the cited rule (if I understand it properly) seems illogical. Sentences can end in verbs. So, if colons can come after complete sentences, then colons can come directly after verbs.

For instance, here’s a sentence from this week’s Economist:

Lviv displays formidable discipline and self-organisation in its self-policing: taxi drivers use their radios to report anything suspicious.

If we replace in its self-policing with in how it self-polices, then we have a verb directly followed by a colon:

Lviv displays formidable discipline and self-organisation in how it self-polices: taxi drivers use their radios to report anything suspicious.

Here's another example of one of their sentences and a paraphrase that ends up with a verb + colon:

But the two sides should not overdo it: they need each other.

But the two sides should not exaggerate: they need each other.

Maybe the rule needs rephrasing—or abandoning.

Although style guides typically cover lists in some detail (Chicago Manual of Style, Fifteenth Edition, for example, devotes five pages to issues involved in punctuating lists), I haven't found any style guide that talks about how to punctuate a list run in reverse. Probably this unaccustomed reserve reflects the notion that such an approach will rarely come up come up in writing destined for supervised publication. But the absence of style-guide guidance means that you don't have to look over your shoulder at a disapproving authority, regardless of how you decide to punctuate your backward list.

As a matter of personal preference, I like Edwin Ashworth's recommendation to use ellipsis points, though using an em dash or a colon instead will likewise signal that you have finished itemizing the parallel items on your list and are now prepared to say something more general about them.

One approach that has become more popular in recent years and that I detest is the series of one-word or short-phrase sentences followed by the generally applicable comment. For example:

Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. The seasons come and the seasons go, and still no one is doing anything about them.

Or to adopt your example:

Californian. Mexican. French. Etc. I love all burritos.

I'm not sure whether writers who employ this type of punctuation think the period separations give their writing admirable gravitas, or whether they they think their readers need to digest their prose in tiny bites, or whether they think the style is cute or hip—but I've run into examples of it all too often in the past few years, and I can't think of anything positive to say about it.