Punctuation in bullet text?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Peter Liu wondered: <<I'm converting a paragraph of content to bullet 
text for a online course. I have 2 questions: 1. Do I capitalize the 
first word in each bullet point? 2. Do I add period to the end of each 
bullet?>>

The first thing to get straight is that each bullet in a given list 
should be grammatically parallel: that is, they should all be complete 
sentences, or should all be sentence fragments that complete the 
thought that introduces the list (e.g., "the following components of a 
PC are crucial").

If you are creating complete sentences, capitalize and punctuate the 
same way you would for any other grammatically correct sentence. If 
you're creating fragments, you've already broken the biggest 
grammatical rule, and thus, there's no reason for the sentences to be 
capitalized or punctuated according to grammar. That being the case, 
it's more important to be consistent (all begin with caps or none; all 
end in periods, or none) than it is to be grammatical*.

* Grammar exists to make things comprehensible--it's the set of 
unwritten rules we've all agreed govern communication using words--so 
even inherently ungrammatical sentence fragments must still be 
sufficiently grammatical to be easily comprehensible.

<<Proofreading literally means reading a document without audio. It is 
used to:
- identify and understand the context and reviewing the text in its 
entirety...>>

Since each bullet in your example is an imperative statement, you could 
capitalize it and end it with a period. But given that each bullet 
completes the introductory thought, there's no need to do so. In the 
past, I've suggested ending each line with a comma or semicolon, and 
ending the last with a period, because this turns the bulleted list 
into the grammatical equivalent of a sentence containing internal 
punctuation. That's correct, but far fussier than necessary.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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