From the course: Writing in Plain Language

Use bulleted lists to support your message

From the course: Writing in Plain Language

Use bulleted lists to support your message

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- Which would you rather read, this paragraph or this, a bulleted list? Bulleted lists play an important role in plain writing because they're easier to read than long sentences or paragraphs. The bullet, that simple little black dot, shows the relationship between the smaller ideas, the ones that are bulleted, and the larger idea, the lead-in statement. Bullets also convey that the items in the list are comparable and that they relate to the lead-in statement in the same way. Yep, that little simple black dot does a lot of work. Now keep in mind that a bulleted list attracts the reader's eye like a magnet, so you've got to write your lists properly. First, use a strong lead-in statement. The lead-in statement is the controlling idea of the list, so choose a clear idea expressed fully. Second, use consistent capitalization and punctuation. Most of the time, you'll begin each bulleted item with a capital letter, and you'll omit end punctuation unless each item is a full sentence. And third, use parallel structure, which means that each bulleted item must start with the same part of speech and have the same grammatical structure. So in this example, we can improve the lead-in statement by clarifying what the list is about. We'll remove the end punctuation because they're not all full sentences, and we'll change the first and third bullets to create parallel structure. You know how much readers love bulleted lists? Enough to coin the word bulletize to describe the act of adding easy-to-see bullets to dense paragraph text. And while bulletize may be an odd-sounding word, readers' need for and love of bulleted lists is natural. Plain language writers should take note.

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