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I'm posting this merely for the sake of offering another opinion on legibility; I don't think that any syntax changes in this area are good, because they can break existing and compliant R5RS code. For instance, I've seen this naming convention somewhere: FOO has to do with an exclusive interval, FOO: with an interval exclusive on the lower bound and exclusive on the upper bound, :FOO with an interval inclusive on the lower bound and exclusive on the upper bound, and :FOO: with an inclusive interval. For another example, SRFI 42 would break if the meaning of a colon prefix were changed in Scheme's lexical identifier syntax, although if any extension were to be made I'd prefer the colon prefix. Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 17:18:17 -0400 From: Marc Feeley <feeley@iro.umontreal.ca> I find colon at the end to be more natural since it closely corresponds to the use of colon in English (and many other natural languages). English has a few differences, though, most prominent among them that there is other punctuation separating the pairs. Compare: foo: bar, baz: quux, zot: mumble or foo: bar; baz: quux; zot: mumble with foo: bar baz: quux zot: mumble In the last one I find it hard to tell where one pair ends and the next one begins. On the other hand, with a prefix, the delimitation of the pairs is very clear: :foo bar :baz quux :zot mumble 1) I prefer prefix syntax, e.g. (button :text "OK" :action quit) 2) I prefer suffix syntax, e.g. (button text: "OK" action: quit) 3) I don't care I opt for (1).