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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:
- Milk
- Eggs
- Bread
- Butter
| ? | |
|---|---|
Bullet | |
| In Unicode | U+2022 ? BULLET (•, •) |
| Different from | |
| Different from | U+00B7 · MIDDLE DOT U+2219 ? BULLET OPERATOR |
| Related | |
| See also | other types of bullet symbols, listed below |
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"
editItems—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.[2]
History
editThe 1950 New York News Type Book is credited as the first style guide to include a defined use for bullets. The Type Book described it as a typographic device to be used as an "Accessory" alongside asterisks, checks, and other marks available to people making advertisements for the News. The book "neither discusses the function of bullets in advertisements nor distinguishes them from any of the other items in the 'accessories' category", but can be seen to use them as a form of dinkus in an advertising panel.[3]
Modern use
editExample: "Bullets are often used in technical writing, reference works, notes, and presentations". This statement may be presented using bullets or other techniques.
Bullets are often used in:
- 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
editThe bullet glyph is sometimes used as a way to hide passwords or confidential information in a practice known as password masking.[4] For example, the credit card number 1234 5678 9876 4321 might be displayed as ???? ???? ???? 4321.
Bullet operator
editA 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).[5]
Computer usage
editThere have been different ways to encode bullet points in computer systems.
In historical systems
editGlyphs 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
editThere 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
editTo 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
editWhen using the US keyboard, a bullet point character can be produced by pressing 7 on the numpad while keeping Alt pressed.[6]
In MacOS
editWhen using the US keyboard, a bullet point character can be produced by pressing 8 while keeping Option(Alt) pressed.[7]
In LaTeX
editTo 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.[8]
Wiki markup
editA list item on a wiki page is indicated using one or more leading asterisks in wiki markup as well as in many other wikis.[9]
Other uses in computing
editThe bullet is often used for separating menu items, usually in the footer menu. It is common, for example, to see it in website designs and in many WordPress themes. It is also used by text editors, like Microsoft Word, to create lists.
Notes
edit- ^ 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
edit- ^ "Bullet Points: What, Why, and How to Use Then". Content and Commas. 15 January 2022.
- ^ "Using Bullet Points". merriam-webster.com. Merriam Webster. Retrieved 19 January 2025.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Hu, Yuqi; Alroomi, Suood; Sahin, Sena; Li, Frank (9 December 2024). "Unmasking the Security and Usability of Password Masking". Proceedings of the 2024 on ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 4241–4255. doi:10.1145/3658644.3690333. ISBN 979-8-4007-0636-3. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
- ^ Steele, Shawn (24 April 1996). "cp437_DOSLatinUS to Unicode table" (TXT). 2.00. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
- ^ "Alt Codes for Bullet Point Symbols (? ? ?)". Alt Code Unicode. 20 November 2018. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
- ^ "Bullet Point Alt Code: How to type (?) on any keyboard". How to Type Anything. 5 March 2020. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
- ^ "LaTeX - List Structures". Wikibooks. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
- ^ MediaWiki. "Help:Formatting". Retrieved 23 February 2018.
Further reading
edit- 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
edit
Media related to Bullets (typography) at Wikimedia Commons
