Bullet (•)

How to read it

Unicode encodes it as U+2022 BULLET. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it in printing as a heavy dot “used to highlight a particular passage”, and Merriam-Webster as “a large dot placed in printed matter to call attention to a particular passage”, listed under its sense of something resembling a bullet.

Also searched as: •, bullet meaning, bullet point symbol, bullet symbol.

How style guides punctuate bulleted lists

Guides differ on the punctuation that goes with them. The Guardian’s style guide gives each bullet point a full stop. The US Government Publishing Office’s Style Manual allows commas, semicolons, periods “or even none at all” at the end of each item, as long as the choice is consistent.

In the Congressional Record

In the US Congressional Record a bullet marks statements that were not spoken aloud in the chamber. The GPO Style Manual’s instructions for the Record’s index say a “bullet following page number in index identifies unspoken material”.

Look-alikes

Unicode lists several dots that are easy to confuse with it. The middle dot · (U+00B7) is smaller and sits at mid-height; Unicode notes it is also used as a raised decimal point or a multiplication sign. The bullet operator ∙ (U+2219) is a maths sign, the one dot leader ․ (U+2024) sits on the line, and the white bullet ◦ (U+25E6) is an open circle. The triangular bullet ‣ (U+2023) and the hyphen bullet ⁃ (U+2043) are other list markers. Butterick’s Practical Typography prefers hollow bullets to solid ones because they are more subtle, and says asterisks are too small and too high for the job.