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| • | |
|---|---|
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 |
Intypography, abullet orbullet point,•, is atypographical mark used to introduce items in alist. For example:
The bullet symbol may take any of a variety of shapes, such as circular, square, diamond or arrow. Typicalword processor software offers a wide selection of shapes and colors. Several regular symbols, such as* (asterisk),- (hyphen),. (period), and eveno (lowercase Latin letterO), are conventionally used inASCII-only text or other environments where bullet characters are not available. Historically, theindex symbol☞ (representing a hand with a pointing index finger) was popular for similar uses.
Lists made with bullets are calledbulleted lists. TheHTML element name for a bulleted list is "unordered list", because the list items are not arranged in numerical order (as they would be in anumbered list).
Items—known as "bullet points"—may be short phrases, single sentences, or ofparagraph length.[1] Bulleted items are not usually terminated with afull stop unless they are complete sentences. In some cases, however, thestyle guide for a given publication may call for every item except the last one in each bulleted list to be terminated with asemicolon, 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]
The 1950New 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 theNews. 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 ofdinkus in an advertising panel.[3]
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:
Alternatives to bulleted lists arenumbered lists andoutlines (lettered lists, hierarchical lists). They are used where either the order is important or to label the items for later referencing.
The 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 number1234 5678 9876 4321 might be displayed as•••• •••• •••• 4321.
A variant, thebullet 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 originalIBM PC character set,Code page 437, where it had the code-point F916 (24910).[5]
There have been different ways to encode bullet points in computer systems.
Glyphs such as•,◦ and their reversed variants◘,◙ became available intext mode since earlyIBM PCs with MDA–CGA–EGAgraphic adapters, because built-inscreen fonts contained such forms at code points 7–10. These were not truecharacters because such points belong to theC0 control codes range; therefore, these glyphs required a special way to be placed on the screen (seecode 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 bySetext andwiki engines.
There are a variety ofUnicode bullet characters, including:
To create bulleted list items for a web page, the markup languageHTML provides the list tag<li>. The browser will display one bulleted list item for each item in anunordered list.
When using the US keyboard, a bullet point character can be produced by pressing 7 on thenumpad while keeping Alt pressed.[6]
When using the US keyboard, a bullet point character can be produced by pressing 8 while keeping Option(Alt) pressed.[7]
To create bulleted list items for a document, the markup languageLaTeX provides the item tag\item. Each item tag inside an itemized list will generate one bulleted list item.[8]
A list item on a wiki page is indicated using one or more leading asterisks inwiki markup as well as in many otherwikis.[9]
The 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 manyWordPress themes. It is also used by text editors, likeMicrosoft Word, to create lists.
Media related toBullets (typography) at Wikimedia Commons