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Bullet (typography)

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Bullet
In UnicodeU+2022 BULLET (•, •)
Different from
Different fromU+00B7 · MIDDLE DOT
U+2219 BULLET OPERATOR
Related
See alsoother types of bullet symbols, listed below

In typography, a bullet or bullet point, , is a typographical symbol or glyph used to introduce items in a list. For example:
 Item 1
 Item 2
 Item 3

The bullet symbol may take any of a variety of shapes, such as circular, square, diamond or arrow. Typical word processor software offers a wide selection of shapes and colors. Several regular symbols, such as * (asterisk), - (hyphen), . (period), and even o (lowercase Latin letter O), are conventionally used in ASCII-only text or other environments where bullet characters are not available. Historically, the index symbol (representing a hand with a pointing index finger) was popular for similar uses.

Lists made with bullets are called bulleted lists. The HTML element name for a bulleted list is "unordered list", because the list items are not arranged in numerical order (as they would be in a numbered list).

"Bullet points"

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Items—known as "bullet points"—may be short phrases, single sentences, or of paragraph length.[1] Bulleted items are not usually terminated with a full stop unless they are complete sentences. In some cases, however, the style guide for a given publication may call for every item except the last one in each bulleted list to be terminated with a semicolon, and the last item with a full stop. It is correct to terminate any bullet point with a full stop if the text within that item consists of one full sentence or more. Bullet points are usually used to highlight list elements.

Example of use for a bullet point list

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Take for example this arbitrarily chosen statement "Bullets are most often used in technical writing, reference works, notes, and presentations". This statement may be presented using bullets or other techniques:

  • Technical writing
  • Reference works
  • Notes
  • Presentations

Alternatives to bulleted lists are numbered lists and outlines (lettered lists, hierarchical lists). They are used where either the order is important or to label the items for later referencing.

Other uses

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The glyph is sometimes used as a way to hide passwords or confidential information. For example, the credit card number 1234 5678 9876 4321 might be displayed as •••• •••• •••• 4321.

Bullet operator

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A variant, the bullet operator (U+2219 BULLET OPERATOR) has a unicode code-point but its purpose does not appear to be documented.[a] The glyph was transposed into Unicode from the original IBM PC character set, Code page 437, where it had the code-point F916 (24910).[2]

Computer usage

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There have been different ways to encode bullet points in computer systems.

In historical systems

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Glyphs such as , 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 because such points belong to the C0 control codes range; 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 by an asterisk; several word processors automatically convert asterisks to bullets if used at the start of line. This notation was inherited by Setext and wiki engines.

In Unicode

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There are a variety of Unicode bullet characters, including:

  • U+2022 BULLET (•, •)
  • U+2023 TRIANGULAR BULLET
  • U+2043 HYPHEN BULLET (⁃)
  • U+204C BLACK LEFTWARDS BULLET
  • U+204D BLACK RIGHTWARDS BULLET
  • U+2219 BULLET OPERATOR for use in mathematical notation primarily as a dot product instead of interpunct.
  • U+25CB WHITE CIRCLE (○)
  • U+25CF BLACK CIRCLE
  • U+25D8 INVERSE BULLET
  • U+25E6 WHITE BULLET
  • U+2619 REVERSED ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET; see Fleuron (typography)
  • U+2765 ROTATED HEAVY BLACK HEART BULLET
  • U+2767 ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET; see Fleuron (typography)
  • U+29BE CIRCLED WHITE BULLET (⦾)
  • U+29BF ⦿ CIRCLED BULLET (⦿)
  • U+25C9 FISHEYE used in Japan as a bullet, and called tainome.

In web pages

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To create bulleted list items for a web page, the markup language HTML provides the list tag <li>. The browser will display one bulleted list item for each item in an unordered list.

In Windows

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When using the US keyboard, a bullet point character can be produced by pressing 7 on the numpad while keeping Alt pressed.

In MacOS

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When using the US keyboard, a bullet point character can be produced by pressing 8 while keeping Option(Alt) pressed.

In LaTeX

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To create bulleted list items for a document, the markup language LaTeX provides the item tag \item . Each item tag inside an itemized list will generate one bulleted list item.[3]

Wiki markup

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A list item on a wiki page is indicated using one or more leading asterisks in wiki markup as well as in many other wikis.[4]

Other uses in computing

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The bullet is often used for separating menu items, usually in the footer menu. It is common, for example, to see it in latest website designs and in many WordPress themes. It is also used by text editors, like Microsoft Word, to create lists.

Notes

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  1. ^ Many sources suggest that it means logical conjunction. In fact, the symbol is the conventional one for this function. All the sources appear to derive from an earlier version of this Wikipedia page, where that assertion was made without adequate evidence.

References

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  1. ^ "Bullet Points: What, Why, and How to Use Then". 15 January 2022.
  2. ^ Steele, Shawn (24 April 1996). "cp437_DOSLatinUS to Unicode table" (TXT). 2.00. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
  3. ^ "LaTeX - List Structures". Wikibooks. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  4. ^ MediaWiki. "Help:Formatting". Retrieved 23 February 2018.

Further reading

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