Bullet (typography)
| •o | |
|---|---|
Bullet | |
| In Unicode | U+2022 • BULLET (•, •) |
| Different from | |
| Different from | U+00B7 · MIDDLE DOT U+2219 ∙ BULLET OPERATOR |
| Related | |
| See also | other bullet characters |
In typography, a bullet is a typographical mark placed before an item in a list. The common round form, •, is encoded in Unicode as U+2022 • BULLET (•, •).[1] Other glyphs and graphics can also be used as list markers.[1] A list set with these marks is called a bulleted list. An individual entry is often called a bullet point.[2]
For example:
- Milk
- Eggs
- Bread
- Butter
Use and styling
[edit]Bullets may take the form of solid or open circles, squares, triangles, dingbats, or other graphics.[1][3] Pointing-hand marks such as ☞, U+261E WHITE RIGHT POINTING INDEX, can also direct attention to an item or passage.[1]
Bulleted lists can contain nested levels. Nested items are usually indented, and typesetting or word-processing software may assign a different bullet form to each level.[4][5]
A bulleted list does not assign numbers to its entries. In HTML, the <ul> element is used for a list in which changing the order of the items would not materially change the meaning. The <ol> element is used when the order is intentional. Individual entries use the <li> element.[6]
Punctuation and capitalization depend on house style. Short fragments may be left without terminal punctuation, while complete sentences may end with periods.[7][8] A list item that completes an introductory sentence may also take a period.[8]
History
[edit]The English word bullet comes from Middle French boulette, meaning a small ball, and boulet, meaning a missile. Both derive from boule, meaning ball.[9]
Marks that direct readers toward particular passages predate the modern bullet. The manicule, a pointing-hand mark such as ☞, was written in manuscript margins and was later used in print. It was common in manuscript annotation before the spread of printing and remained in use in early printed books.[10]
A 1950 New York News Type Book used "bullet" for the typographic device and placed bullets in a category called "Accessories", alongside asterisks and check marks. The book did not assign bullets a distinct list function.[11]
The compound noun "bullet point" is attested from 1983 in a book review published in Datamation.[12][2]
Modern use
[edit]Example: "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 either where the order is important or to label the items for later referencing.
Computing
[edit]Historical systems
[edit]In the original IBM Personal Computer character set, some byte values used for ASCII control codes displayed visible glyphs. Decimal values 7 through 10 displayed •, ◘, ○ and ◙.[13] The corresponding Unicode code points U+0007 through U+000A are BELL, BACKSPACE, CHARACTER TABULATION and LINE FEED.[14]
The IBM PC's text modes rendered character codes as bitmap glyphs. The Color Graphics Adapter used 8-by-8-pixel character cells, while the Monochrome Display Adapter used 9-by-14-pixel cells.[15]
Plain-text markup often uses ordinary ASCII characters in place of a literal bullet. CommonMark, a specification for Markdown, accepts *, - and + as bullet-list markers.[16] The earlier Setext markup language used an asterisk followed by a space to mark a bulleted item.[17]
Unicode
[edit]U+2022 BULLET is in the General Punctuation block and has the descriptive alias "black small circle". Other Unicode characters have names or annotations that designate them as bullet forms.[18]
| Character | Code point | Unicode name |
|---|---|---|
| • | U+2022 | BULLET |
| ‣ | U+2023 | TRIANGULAR BULLET |
| ⁃ | U+2043 | HYPHEN BULLET |
| ⁌ | U+204C | BLACK LEFTWARDS BULLET |
| ⁍ | U+204D | BLACK RIGHTWARDS BULLET |
| ◘ | U+25D8 | INVERSE BULLET |
| ◦ | U+25E6 | WHITE BULLET |
| ☙ | U+2619 | REVERSED ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET |
| ❥ | U+2765 | ROTATED HEAVY BLACK HEART BULLET |
| ❧ | U+2767 | ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET |
| ⦾ | U+29BE | CIRCLED WHITE BULLET |
| ⦿ | U+29BF | CIRCLED BULLET |
| ◉ | U+25C9 | FISHEYE, also used in Japan as a bullet and called tainome[19] |
The visually similar ∙ is U+2219 ∙ BULLET OPERATOR, a separate character in the Mathematical Operators block. U+2022 BULLET is part of General Punctuation.[20] In the Unicode mapping for code page 437, byte F916 maps to U+2219 BULLET OPERATOR.[21]
Web pages
[edit]In HTML, an unordered list uses the <ul> element, with each entry placed in an <li> element. Web browsers normally display unordered-list items with disc-shaped markers, though CSS can change their appearance.[6][22] CSS can use another predefined marker, a character, a counter or an image.[3]
The U+2022 character can be written in HTML as • or •, or with a numeric character reference.[23] These references produce a bullet glyph but do not make the surrounding text a list. HTML list elements give browsers and assistive technologies information about the relationship among the items.[24]
Windows
[edit]In Microsoft applications on Windows, a bullet can be entered as Alt+0+1+4+9 on the numeric keypad with Num Lock enabled.[25][26] In Microsoft Word, typing 2022 followed by Alt+X converts the Unicode code point into a bullet.[27]
macOS
[edit]LaTeX
[edit]In LaTeX, the itemize environment creates a bulleted list. Each \item command begins a new entry.[29]
Wiki markup
[edit]In MediaWiki markup, an unordered-list item begins with an asterisk. More leading asterisks create nested levels.[30]
Other uses in computing
[edit]WordPress navigation menus generated by wp_nav_menu() use an HTML <ul> element by default. A site's CSS can keep, change or remove the list marker.[31][22]
In Microsoft Word, typing an asterisk followed by a space can begin a bulleted list automatically. The bullet symbol, size and formatting can then be changed through the list controls.[32][33]
Other uses
[edit]Bullets are also used to conceal characters entered into password fields, a technique known as password masking.[34] For example, password may be displayed as ••••••••.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 "Writing Systems and Punctuation". The Unicode Standard, Version 17.0. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- 1 2 "Bullet point". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- 1 2 "Generated content, automatic numbering, and lists". Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1. World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Create bulleted and numbered lists in InDesign". Adobe. 2 June 2026. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Define new bullets, numbers, and multilevel lists". Microsoft Support. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- 1 2 "The ul element". HTML Standard. WHATWG. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ Rappaport, Jennifer (7 December 2018). "Creating Vertical Lists in MLA Style". MLA Style Center. Modern Language Association. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- 1 2 "Lists". Microsoft Writing Style Guide. Microsoft. 10 February 2026. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Bullet". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ Durbach, Nadja; Proctor, Tammy; Clark, James G.; Lima, Verônica Calsoni; Mallipeddi, Ramesh; Richards, Cynthia; Menke, Richard; Hicks, Mar (2025). "The End of Print: A Roundtable". Journal of British Studies. 64: e1, 1–35. doi:10.1017/jbr.2024.187.
- ↑ Neeley, Kathryn A.; Alley, Michael (2011). The Humble History of the "Bullet". 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. Vancouver, British Columbia. doi:10.18260/1-2--18810. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Bullet point, n." Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ International Business Machines Corporation (April 1983). IBM Personal Computer Technical Reference. pp. C-11 – C-12. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
{{cite book}}:|author=has generic name (help) - ↑ "C0 Controls and Basic Latin". The Unicode Standard. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ Norton, Peter; Wilton, Richard (1988). The New Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC & PS/2. Microsoft Press. ISBN 978-1-55615-131-6. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "CommonMark Spec". 0.31.2. 28 January 2024. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ Feldman, Ian (16 August 1992). "What is setext". Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "NamesList.txt". The Unicode Standard, Version 17.0. Unicode Consortium. 30 July 2025. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Geometric Shapes". The Unicode Standard. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Mathematical Operators" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 17.0. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ Steele, Shawn (24 April 1996). "cp437_DOSLatinUS to Unicode table". 2.00. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- 1 2 "Rendering". HTML Standard. WHATWG. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Named character references". HTML Standard. WHATWG. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "H48: Using ol, ul and dl for lists or groups of links". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Keyboard shortcuts for international characters". Microsoft Support. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Keyboard shortcuts for Outlook". Microsoft Support. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Insert ASCII or Unicode Latin-based symbols and characters". Microsoft Support. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Format lists in Pages on Mac". Apple Support. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "LaTeX2e for authors" (PDF). The LaTeX Project. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Help:Lists". MediaWiki. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "wp_nav_menu()". WordPress Developer Resources. WordPress.org. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Create a bulleted or numbered list". Microsoft Support. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ "Define new bullets, numbers, and multilevel lists". Microsoft Support. Retrieved 10 August 2026.
- ↑ Hu, Yuqi; Alroomi, Suood; Sahin, Sena; Li, Frank (9 December 2024). "Unmasking the Security and Usability of Password Masking". Proceedings of the 2024 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.
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.
External links
[edit]
Media related to Bullets (typography) at Wikimedia Commons
