discuss: Thread: bulleted lists english syntax

Hello,
I often use bulleted lists (" *" in MoinMoin.

I wonder what is the english syntax for them.
* do you use uppercase after the bullet? (I didn't, here) - french
don't. It's specially a problem when there are more than one sentence
in the entry
* what do you use as *ending* mark on the simpler case? french use
 " ;"

* any other idea?

thanks
jdd
-- 
jdd for the Linux Documentation Project
http://wiki.tldp.org
http://www.dodin.net

Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####

> Hello,
> I often use bulleted lists (" *" in MoinMoin.
> 
> I wonder what is the english syntax for them.
> * do you use uppercase after the bullet? (I didn't, here)

There's no convention about that, really (except see below).  You mostly
just want to be consistent, in what you do.

Basically, if the items are complete sentences, then punctuate them that
way (initial capital and ending period aka full stop[1]).  If not, then
I'd say you would not capitalise nor add punctuation at the end.
Examples:

Things I did when I got up:
o  At 8:15, I brewed coffee.
o  Then, I cooked some crepes.
o  Last, I kicked the mafiosi off my IRC server.

Things I did when I got up:
o  brewed coffee
o  cooked crepes
o  evicted script kiddie cretins

In fact, it might be a good idea to make sure the list consists either 
of all full sentences or of fragments, just so they can look alike.`

> * what do you use as *ending* mark on the simpler case? french use
>  " ;"

I've seen semicolons (";") used that way.  Personally, I find that a
little peculiar and wouldn't do it, because that has nothing to do with
what semicolons are normally used for in English -- but it's definitely 
often done that way, for some reason.  But, hold on....

Actually, I've changed my mind.  On reflection, I just remembered a
reason why that punctuation can make sense:  One of the traditional uses
in English is to delimits lists of things that (themselves) have internal
commas, because the semicolon mark is a grammatical separator of
stronger effect (in analogy to mathematics, higher in precedence of
operation).  Like this:

   His summer school reading list included The Lion, the Witch, and the
   Wardrobe; The Man Who Was Thursday; The Critique of Practical Reason;
   Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal; and 
   The Importance of Being Earnest.

So, rendering that same sentence into bullet form, one gets:

His summer school reading list included 
o  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe;
o  The Man Who Was Thursday;
o  The Critique of Practical Reason;
o  Lamb: The Gospel According to Bill, Christ's Childhood Pal; and
o  The Importance of Being Earnest.

Notice that the closing period / full stop gets retained, because, after
all, it's really just a simple sentence that's been rearranged
vertically.

[1] The latter ("full stop") is the British term for the "." symbol when
used as punctuation to terminate a sentence.  "Period" is the American /
Canadian term.

Rick Moen a écrit :

> [1] The latter ("full stop") is the British term for the "." symbol when
> used as punctuation to terminate a sentence.  "Period" is the American /
> Canadian term.

well... I wont go in this war :-)))

thanks for the answer
jdd


-- 
jdd for the Linux Documentation Project
http://wiki.tldp.org
http://www.dodin.net