Punctuation help, please

[JoHunley]

I'm not sure how to correctly punctuate this. Here is an excerpt, perhaps someone could give me a little help here.

Trick shot #1 - The shot being lined up is a scratch shot. If taken, the cue ball will ricochet into a pocket. The player takes the shot anyway and, rather than ricocheting, the cue ball stops dead on impact with the other ball.

How it is done - Hit the top of the cue ball rather than the center, and do so in a downward motion. Ordinarily, a ball rolls top to bottom; the top of the ball rolls down and frontward, or counterclockwise as seen from the side. You want to make it roll in the opposite way - the top rolling down from the hind side, or clockwise - while still moving forward. When this happens the backwards roll of the ball causes it to stop rolling as soon as it encounters another object, thereby stopping the ball.

Now, the separation between "Trick shot #1" and the description... Should that be a hyphen, or a colon? And should it be followed by one space or two spaces before the description starts?

Thanks for the assistance.

[Ed]

Either a colon or a hyphen is a clear way of punctuating this. Colons are typically followed by two spaces while hypens have one space on either side. You could also just use "Trick Shot #1" as a subheading that appears above the paragraph that describes it. That way, the beginning of the next paragraph (How it is done) is clearly under "Trick Shot #1." May be nitpicky, but it would be clearer if the beginning of this paragraph didn't begin with the same type of punctuation as the first paragraph - numbered points (if you are describing Trick Shot #1, #2, etc. ) should be punctuated consistently so the eye can skip from point to point. The hyphen after "How it is done" tricks the eye into thinking this is another numbered point. I would use a colon after this one just so everything is immediately clear.

Yay for attention to detail,
Ed

[JoHunley]

You are full of awesome, Ed. Thank you so much!