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Greetings! I am editing some documents at MCI Telecommunications in Richardson
Texas.
An interesting question has arisen OTJ:
I am editing a document that must be formatted & distributed as ASCII text only,
with no fancy fonts, underlining, boldface, or any other creature comforts of
the word processing environment. :(
In instructions, does any hard, fast rule or precedent exist for punctuating
the numbers of a numbered list? Space is at a premium for us in these
do uments, and the format we use is very cluttered.
ehave seen these used:
1. 1:
2. 2: (etc.)
I favor the "1: texttext" format over the "1. texttext" format for this
arena, although it is nonstandard & violates the rule of Two Spaces After Every
Colon from English 101. My reasons are:
1: Many of our items within the list contain periods, but few contain colons
2: I am trying to convince the authors that they really need 2 spaces after
a period unless it's in a numeric usage like "Revision Level 3.11"--
especially after periods ending sentences.
3: I think it's less cluttered than "1) texttext"
4: Since the instructions are in a list form, it makes some sense to introduce
portions of a list with punctuation that usually denotes a list
I am curious to know what other writers think on the subject. A tech editor
can't be too careful.
I can't subscribe to lists from this address, but please feel free to forward
this to other writers who might have input.
