Bullet points are the best friend of the web writer.
They break up pages into neat, bite-sized chunks – making content easier to scan and read. But unfortunately, they are also often incorrectly punctuated.
Here’s a cheat sheet:
- If the bullet points are complete sentences (like these), punctuate them as you would a sentence with a capital at the start and a full stop at the end.
- It doesn’t matter if there is a lead-in sentences or not (with a colon), as long as each bullet point makes sense as a stand alone statement.
But, if the bullet points are a carry on from the lead-in sentence:
- you use a colon at the end of the lead-in sentence
- you don’t capitalise the first letter
- there is no need for a full stop until the final point.
I hope this helps!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
believe it or not, I was pondering proper use of bullet points just last night. Thanks! it’s info like this that makes me feel smart when I correct other peoples work
(and I don’t edit my comment so much as I do when responding to a post about grammar!)
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I’m glad you found the post useful
I am thinking of a range of similar posts about punctuation and web writing best practice, so if there is anything you want me to cover, simply let me know.
Cheers