Re: Periods and bullets

[Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>]

In discussions of programming style, it is often suggested that every 
item in a list receive the same punctuation, if allowed by the 
programming language. For instance in Perl,

for my $item (@needed_items) {
    push @items, (
       "A red $item in blue trim",
       "A blue $item in red trim",
       "A white $item in grey trim",
    );
}

Note the comma at the end of the third item. Perl's syntax does not 
require it, but neither is it forbidden. It is a good idea because it 
allows one to move items around, or to add them to or remove them from 
the list, without having to re-fiddle the punctuation.

If one were to follow the same principle in tech writing, one would 
construct parallel bullet items that would all receive the same punctuation.

On the other hand, sometimes a bullet list (or especially a nested 
bullet list) is a bad idea, and a totally different treatment is 
appropriate. In my experience, bullet lists seem to arise from 
PowderPoint presentations where the speaker (or the slide artist) 
couldn't think of anything better. If I'm actually paying attention to 
what I am writing when an SME hands me bullet lists, I can sometimes see 
them for what they really are: yawn generators.

My wife, a quality engineer who has used bullet lists in presentations, 
says that a proper bullet list should contain definitions. Each bulleted 
term should be followed by its brief explanation:

  * Bell curve. This is a normal distribution, appropriate for showing 
data that distributes evenly about a mean value.

  * Exponential curve. Yadda yadda sentence.

  * Another curve. Another yadda sentence.

Without the additional sentence each item is serving only as an 
aide-memoire to the speaker, who probably should be lecturing from notes 
instead of slides. The usual sheaf of post-lecture bullet handouts is 
notoriously useless. Perhaps the slides would be better used to show 
pictures of the speaker's dog.
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