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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"

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 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.

Bullets were first described as a typographic device in 1950, in the New York News Type Book, where they were described as an "Accessory" alongside asterisks, checks and other marks available to people making advertisements for the New York News.

Example of use for a bullet point list

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

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

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

Computer usage

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

In historical systems

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

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

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

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

In MacOS

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

In LaTeX

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.

Wiki markup

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.

Other uses in computing

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

1. Many sources suggest that it means logical conjunction. In fact, the symbol ${\displaystyle \land }$ is the conventional one for this function. All the sources appear to derive from an earlier version of this Misplaced Pages page, where that assertion was made without adequate evidence.

References

1. "Bullet Points: What, Why, and How to Use Then". Content and Commas. 15 January 2022.
2. Neeley, Kathryn; Alley, Michael (June 2011). The Humble History of the "Bullet". 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. Vancouver, BC. pp. 22–1462.1–22.1462.14. doi:10.18260/1-2--18810. Retrieved 2 January 2025.
3. Steele, Shawn (24 April 1996). "cp437_DOSLatinUS to Unicode table" (TXT). 2.00. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
4. "LaTeX - List Structures". Wikibooks. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
5. MediaWiki. "Help:Formatting". Retrieved 23 February 2018.

Further reading

• Clair, Kate (1999). A Typographic Workbook: A Primer to History, Techniques, and Artistry. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9780471292371. OCLC 40881446. Retrieved 28 October 2023. Access to most interior pages is via search.

External links

• Media related to Bullets (typography) at Wikimedia Commons

• Punctuation
• Typographical symbols