Bullet (typography)

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In typography, a bullet ( • ) is a typographical symbol or glyph used to introduce items in a list. For example:

• Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3

It is likely that the name originated from the resemblance of the traditional circular bullet symbol (•) to an actual bullet.

The bullet symbol may take any of a variety of shapes, such as circular, square, diamond, arrow, etc., and typical word processors, such as Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer offer a wide selection of shapes and colours. Several regular symbols are conventionally used in ASCII-only text or another environments where bullet characters are not available, such as * (asterisk), - (hyphen), . (period), and even o (lowercase O). Of course, when writing by hand, bullets may be drawn in any style.

Usage

Bullets are most often used in technical writing, reference works, notes and presentations.

Example:

Where are bullets most often used?

• Technical Writing
• Reference Works
• Notes
• Presentations

Bullet points

Bulleted items – known as "bullet points" – may be short phrases, single sentences, or of paragraph length. Bulleted items are not usually terminated with a full stop if they are not complete sentences, although it is a common practice to terminate every item except the last one with a semicolon, and terminate the last item with a full stop. It is correct to terminate a bullet point with a full stop if the text within that item consists of more than one sentence.

Computer encoding and keyboard entry

The standard circular bullet symbol (•) is at Unicode code point U+2022. In HTML, it may (when not inserted directly) be entered as &bull;, &#x2022;, or &#8226; Unicode also defines a triangular bullet ‣ (U+2023) and a "white bullet" ◦ (U+25E6), as well as other styles. However, semantics normally requires that bulleted items be achieved with the appropriate use of the <li> tag inside an unordered list (<ul>). Such lists may be denoted with leading asterisks in Wikipedia markup as well as in many other wikis.

In the Windows-1252 and several other Windows code pages, the standard circular bullet character is at 149 (decimal). On most Windows systems, it can be entered as the Alt code Alt+0149 (press and hold Alt while typing 0149 on the numeric keypad). Alt+7 generates a • (midpoint – sometimes called period-centered – which is often used as a bullet point).

On Mac OS X, pressing Option+8 inserts a bullet, and pressing Shift+Option+9 inserts the similar interpunct (·).

GTK+ applications on Linux support the ISO 14755-conformant hex Unicode input system; hold Control and Shift while tapping U, then type 2022 and press Enter to insert a • or hold Control and Shift while tapping U, then type B7 and press ↵ Enter to insert a midpoint.

In historical systems

Glyphs "•", "◦" and their reversed variants "◘", "◙" became available in text mode since early IBM PCs with MDA–CGA–EGA graphic adapters, because built-in screen fonts contained such forms at code points 7–10. These were not true characters though, because such points belong to C0 control codes range and, therefore, these glyphs required a special way to be placed on the screen; see code page 437 for discussion.

Prior to the widespread use of word processors, bullets were often denoted either by a lower-case “o” fiiled-in with ink or by asterisks (*), and several word processors automatically convert asterisks to bullets if used at the start of line.This notation was inherited by wiki engines.

References

• Clair, Kate (1999, Digitized 2007-12-20 by University of Michigan Librarires). A Typographic Workbook: A Primer to History, Techniques, and Artistry. Wiley, 1999. ISBN 0471292370, ISBN 9780471292371. Retrieved 2008-11-12. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Boulton, Mark (2005-04-18). "Five simple steps to better typography - Part 2: Hanging punctuation". Journal. Mark Boulton, typography designer. Retrieved 2011-03-13.