Bullet (typography)

In typography, a bullet is a typographical symbol or glyph used to introduce items in a list, like below, also known as the point of a bullet:

• This is the text of a list item. Notice the bullet to the left.
• This is a different list item, and so there is another bullet.
This line is part of the second list item; there is no bullet.
• This is a third list item. There is a new bullet.

There are many other ways of indicating bulleted list items

• This list item accords with wiki-markup's built in bulleting format.

Bullets are most often used in technical writing or reference work to introduce a series of related items. They may be short phrases or of paragraph length. The main point is that all need to be tied together under a general heading. Bulleted items, commonly called bullets are not usually terminated with a full stop if they are not complete sentences, although it is also a common practice (for example, in Portugal) to terminate every item except the last one with a semicolon. It is correct to terminate a bullet point with a full stop under circumstances where more than one sentence makes up the contents of the bullet point.

Some guidelines advocate using a bulleted list only where the list items are unordered (that is, where they could be reordered without losing the sense). Where order is significant, a numbered list is preferred.

The bullet corresponds to Unicode character U+2022. When not using Unicode in HTML, the codes &bull; and &#x2022; give • and •, respectively, but semantics requires that bulleted items be achieved with the appropriate use of the <li> tag inside an unordered list (<ul>). Unicode also defines a triangular bullet ‣ (U+2023).

It is likely that the name 'bullet point' originated from the resemblance of the mark to a bullet.

Bullets are not limited in shape to a black dot, as displayed above. A typical word processor, such as Microsoft Word, offers a variety of shapes including diamonds, check marks, and arrows; many in full color. Of course, when writing by hand, bullets may be drawn in any style.

Prior to widespread use of word processors, bullets were often denoted by asterisks, and several word processors automatically convert asterisks to bullets if used at the start of line.

A number of regular symbols are conventionally used as bullets in text-based systems, such as - (dash), * (asterisk), . (period), and even o (lowercase O). When saving or copying HTML bullets into text format, Mozilla Firefox saves bullets as asterisk, lowercase O, plus, and number sign in order of bullet depth. The asterisk (*) is used to indicate bulleted list items in Wikipedia markup as well as in many other Wikis.[1]

On most Windows systems, press and hold Alt while typing 0149 (Alt+0149) to insert a •, or press and hold Alt while typing 7 on the keypad for a • (midpoint - sometimes called periodcentered - which is often used as a bullet point). This method of entering text is called an Alt Code.

On Mac OS X, pressing Option + 8 inserts a bullet, and pressing Shift + Option + 9 inserts the similar interpunct (·).

GTK+ applications on Linux support the ISO 14755-conformant hex unicode input system; hold Control and Shift while tapping U, then type 2022 and press Enter to insert a • or hold Control and Shift while tapping U, then type b7 and press Enter to insert a midpoint.

References

• Clair, Kate (1999, Digitized 2007-12-20 by University of Michigan Librarires). A Typographic Workbook: A Primer to History, Techniques, and Artistry. Wiley, 1999. ISBN 0471292370, ISBN 9780471292371. Retrieved 2008-11-12. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Boulton, Mark (2005-04-18). "Five simple steps to better typography - Part 2: Hanging punctuation". Journal. Mark Boulton, typography designer. Retrieved 2008-11-12.