Bottom line

• Consider bullets when you have a list.
• Use good spacing.
• Have a system for capitalizing and punctuating.

Consider bullets when you have a list

Whenever you have more than one of anything in a paragraph, consider indenting and using bullets.

Suppose this paragraph has a list somewhere in it:

Now let's reformat the paragraph using bullets to show the list:

Looks much better, doesn't it?

Use good spacing

There's no standard spacing for bullets. Here's a diagram that shows you one good way (the way I do it):

How about spacing bullets for Web pages? Well, web pages seem to have minds of their own.

Have a system for capitalizing and punctuating

There's no standard for capitalizing or punctuating lists. That may seem strange, but it's true. Standards usually exist within companies, of course, but not beyond.

Here's the system I use:

• If the bulleted item is a full sentence, I make it look like one (using a capital letter at the beginning and a period at the end).
• If the bulleted item is not a sentence, I don't use a capital letter or period.
• And if one bulleted item is a sentence, the rest should be—for reasons of parallelism.

The list you just read shows you how I capitalize and punctuate when the items are full sentences. Notice the capital letter at the beginning and the period at the end of each bulleted item.

Here's an example of how I capitalize and punctuate when the bulleted items are not full sentences:

• for full sentences: capital letter and a period at the end
• for less than full sentences: no capital letter or period

Your next step

Now let's turn to typefaces.

Copyright 2007 by Edward P. Bailey
(all rights reserved)