Bite the bullet

Bullet points are a great way to focus a reader’s attention – and they can help you save space in your copy. But you have to be careful, because a badly written bullet point list can kill your copy stone dead.

In reality, there are no hard and fast rules for bullet points. But there are some things you can do to make your bullets easier to read and have greater impact.

Keep your list short
Some lists can go on and on, but the whole point of bullet points is to be concise and to focus the reader’s attention on a few key things. A reader can’t usually remember more than five things so, as a general rule, don’t write more than five.

Keep your bullets short
If you really want people to focus on a few key points, create a list with only a few words in each bullet. Don’t make each bullet a separate paragraph in itself.

Use double-sided bullets to stress the benefits
Sometimes, you want to stress the benefit and explain the reason for it – and that means longer bullets. The best way to do this is to use a double-sided bullet, perhaps with a bit of bold text for good measure. It could look like this:

• Easy to read – the reader’s eye is drawn to the benefit in a double-sided bullet
• Fast to write – double-sided bullets get a lot of information across in a few words

Make sure each bullet follows the same format
One of the most common mistakes in bullet point lists is a change in the bullet structure. For example, the first two bullets may be adjectives and the last one a verb – like this:

Roboport 4000 gives you:

• Speed
• Power
• Works on all open-source platforms

The last bullet doesn't fit with the other two, and it doesn't make sense with the opening. So, you might need to adjust your bullets a little to ensure they all follow the same structure – like this:

Roboport 4000 gives you:

• Speed
• Power
• Flexibility (it works on all open-source platforms)

And what about the grammar?
There are very few hard and fast grammar rules when it comes to bullet points – after all, they are a type of shorthand writing, and are therefore not required to fit the same rigid grammatical structures. But there are a few things to keep in mind:

• You can start each bullet with a capital or lower case letter, but whichever you choose, be consistent
• Do not use semi-colons (;) or commas (,) at the end of a bullet point
• Generally, it’s best not to end each bullet point with a full-stop, unless the bullet point contains more than one complete sentence
• Do not end the second from last bullet point with ‘and’ or ‘or’ in an effort to make your list sound more natural 
• You can end the last bullet point with a full-stop if you wish

Need proofreading help?
Maintaining consistency with bullet point lists can be a difficult, especially in larger documents. But a good proofreader will look out for this (as well as all the other grammar, spelling, style and consistency rules) when they proofread Word documents, PPTs and PDFs.

If you want someone to give your document a final check to make sure it’s error free before it goes to print – get in touch with us.