The Bulleted List is a list made with a typographical bullet symbol or bullet point (•).
For example:
- Point 1
- Point 2
- Point 3
These typographical symbols or glyphs are used in web design to introduce items in a list. They are also used to highlight those items by making them stand out from a page containing a blog, article, landing page, or other.
How to create a Bulleted List?
The bullet symbol may take diverse shapes, such as square, diamond, arrow, circular, or diamond. Conventional word processor software offers a wide choice of colors and shapes. However, suppose bullet characters are not available, such as in ASCII-only text or other environments. In that case, one can use a regular symbol, such as * (asterisk), – (hyphen), . (period), and even o (lowercase Latin letter O). Once, the index symbol ☞ (representing a hand with a pointing index finger) was popular for similar uses.
There have been different ways to encode bullet points in computer systems. For example, the HTML element name for a bulleted list is “unordered list,” as the list items are not in numerical order (as they would be in a numbered list). Therefore, bullet points typically list items.
Bulleted List Use Cases
It is common to see bulleted lists in WordPress themes and the latest web designs. Text editors, like Microsoft Word, also use them to create lists.
Example uses include:
- Lists
- Technical writing
- Presentations
- Reference works
- Notes
- Footer menu
An alternative is the numbered list:
- Lists
- Technical writing
- Presentations
- Reference works
- Notes
- Footer menu
Designers can also use bullets to hide confidential information or passwords. For example, the credit card number 1234 5678 9876 1234 could be shown as •••• •••• •••• 1234.
Also of note is that each item with a bullet may be a short phrase, single sentence, or paragraph length.
If the items in a bulleted list comprise one or more full sentences, each article should end with a full stop.
