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?
Tags: bullets, grammar, online copywriting training, punctuation
