Internet Marketing Strategies from Brightspark Consulting Dublin, Ireland

3 Awesome Tips for Making Amazing Lists

March 10, 2009 at 4:16 pm

A question came up at the online copywriting training course last week concerning punctuation for bulleted lists. Specifically question marks. I would appreciate opinions from any of the Grammar Police out there for this particular case of an obdurate question mark.

Rules for Bullets

A numbered list of bullets is used when order is important. For example, recipes. It is important that the eggs are whisked first before adding sugar.
A blobby list such as this one is used when order is not important.
Try and keep your bullet points to 5 at a maximum. Any more than that and our eye can’t read them. Have a look over here and you’ll get the picture.

The Punctuation Rule

When you present a list of bullets that will be read online
Try not to use punctuation such as full stops at the end of the bullet point
Because that is just adding characters for our already hard-pressed little brains to take in

But if you have a list of bullets and one of them is made up of more than one sentence, like this:

Then the rule is to add a full stop at the end of every bullet in the list.
This is because our brains strive for consistency. Yes, even yours. It’s doing it involuntarily.
I’m not mad about adding full stops either.

The Conundrum

What do you do in this case?
Just because that one above has a question mark.
Now I have to add full stops all the way along.

Or Not? It still looks good like this:

What do you do in this case?
Just because that one above has a question mark
Now I have to add full stops all the way along

I didn’t know the answer to this one, so I consulted with Cork Copywriter Calvin Jones and he also wasn’t aware of any rules. He suggested that it would be dictated by your own writing style, or a corporate style guide if you’re working to one.

So that’s it. There is no rule. It’s a little piece of Grammar Presentation Anarchy! What do you think?

Posted in Write for Web Training | 10 Comments

Comments (10 responses)

Stewart Curry @ March 10th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Should the title not be: “When to Use Punctuation on Bulleted Lists : A Question?”

Or even “3 Awesome tips for making amazing lists” – that’ll get you on the digg homepage in no time!
bren @ March 10th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I’d go with question mark, no full stops on other bullets. I believe it is a taste/style issue. My thinking is:
– Use fullstops where consistency demands, as you said
– A question mark is different though, isn’t it?
– It’s not as necessary to punctuate for consistency

That’s my tuppence anyway.
Rgds
Jennifer Farley @ March 10th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Hmmm, difficult. I wouldn’t consider myself grammar police, maybe grammar FCA, but my thoughts would be that bullet points shouldn’t have more than one sentence and they are being used incorrectly. So if you made sure there was only ever one sentence per bullet then fullstops shouldn’t be an issue.
Maryrose Lyons @ March 10th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
@Stewart thanks, have just changed my blog post title. This is indeed a first; the first time the word ‘awesome’ has appeared on this here blog!

@Bren thanks also. I agree with you. And I think you’re right to point out it’s all about consistency. So whatever you do once, repeat site wide.

@Jennifer. Good point. But have you ever worked on financial or legal content? They tend to be mini essays in each bullet!
Gordon @ March 10th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Hi Maryrose,

I’d go with with no full stops.
John Wood @ March 10th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
My editors always told me that the rule with bullets or numbers was:

* If each list item constitutes a complete sentence, punctuate it as such.
* If a list consists of sentence fragments broken over several list items, treat the whole list as a sentence, perhaps punctuating each item with a comma or semicolon at the end.

Anything that takes a question mark must be a complete sentence, so should be punctuated as such. Best not to mix complete sentences and sentence fragments in one list, make all items one thing or the other.
Denise @ March 10th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Hi Mary Rose

All good comments so far and my two-pence worth – I would go with no full stops. However, another question back – is there a difference for online reading and offline reading?

It’s a question that I’ve been thinking myself quite a lot lately – do you approach full stops on bulleted lists online as you would offline?

or is it just me that just stays awake thinking of such trivial (read: mind-boggling) questions?
Maryrose Lyons @ March 10th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
@Denise. Not a trivial question at all. In fact, feedback from many people who’ve done my web writing course (dating back to 2002) always mentions how knowledge of writing for the web helps their general business writing.

I believe that web writing has risen the bar for offline writing. If we don’t put up with waffle and marketing fluffle online, why should we put up with it on a piece of printed paper too?
Denise @ March 11th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Hi Mary Rose, while you’re out enjoying this lovely afternoon, I’m catching up with emails, blogs etc.

I love writing and I know that I write differently for print than I do for online so I have many questions/queries in relation to what is acceptable. Now, I have a buddy to bounce around my ideas. Yay!

We used to say that time was precious online but it is equally precious offline. I sat down today for the first time in days (that includes Sunday!) to read the Sunday papers with a cuppa. I skimmed through the SBPost (main paper) in 10 mins.

Someone said to me recently that this Recession will slow us all down. Maybe she has a point – but will we ever go back to reading badly written, fluffy articles?
Marketing Musings by Achieve Marketing » Blog Archive » What is the difference between online and offline these days? @ March 11th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
[...] Mary Rose over at Brightspark posed an interesting question to the grammar police yesterday – http://brightspark-consulting.com/blog/2009/03/when-to-use-punctuation-on-bulleted-lists-a-question/ [...]