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Q&A Using hyphen points

Yes, you should try to be consistent. It is very distracting if you have bullet points with wildly inconsistent text. This looks silly: Include an invoice with the package. Free shipping; ...

posted 11y ago by Jay‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:58:38Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8375
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Jay‭ · 2019-12-08T02:58:38Z (about 5 years ago)
Yes, you should try to be consistent. It is very distracting if you have bullet points with wildly inconsistent text. This looks silly:

> - Include an invoice with the package.
> 
> - Free shipping;
> 
> - Have you checked that all items for this order are carefully packed?
> 
> - Label,

Make them similar in length, punctuation, and tone. For example:

> - Invoice
> 
> - Promotional flyers
> 
> - Size 3 box
> 
> - Free shipping

Keep punctuation consistent. You can end each bullet point with no punctuation, with a period, with a semi-colon, etc, but make them all the same. Don't end one with a period, two with semi-colons, and three with no punctuation.

If you find that some bullet points are not clear if you don't give a full sentence of explanation, then turn the rest into full sentences. You can often do this just by adding a word like "use" or "do" if there's no obvious more-specific word.

Avoid dramatically different lengths. When four bullets points are two or three words and one is a paragraph, it looks distinctly odd.

But if you're really struggling, don't kill yourself over it. If you have two or three words for each bullet point, and one of them happens to be a complete sentence while the rest are not, like "Include invoice" versus "Free shipping", I wouldn't go out of my way to figure out how to re-word that one to make it NOT a complete sentence.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2013-07-10T13:59:09Z (over 11 years ago)
Original score: 0