In many European languages the colon is usually followed by a lower-case letter (unless the upper case is due to other reasons, such as a proper noun).
However, usage differs from this in German, where an upper-case letter may be used only if the sentence after the colon could stand alone without the preceding sentence (otherwise one may judge freely according to the relative independency of the two assertions),[7]
and in Dutch, where an upper-case letter must be used if the colon is followed by a quotation or an enumeration of complete sentences, although in all other cases a lower-case letter should be used.[8]