In typography, a bullet is a typographical symbol or glyph used to introduce items in a list, like below:
- This is the text of a list item. Notice the bullet to the left.
- This is a different list item, and so there is another bullet.
- This line is part of the second list item; there is no bullet.
It is most conveniently used in technical writing or reference works to introduce a series of related items. They may be short phrases or of paragraph length. The main point is that all need to be tied together under a general heading. Bulleted items, commonly called "bullets", are usually terminated with a full stop, although it is also a common practice (for example, in Portugal) to terminate every item except the last one with a semicolon.
The bullet corresponds to Unicode character 0x2022. In HTML, the codes • and • give • and •, respectively, but semantics requires that bulleted items be achieved with the appropriate use of the <li> tag inside an unordered list (<ul>). Unicode also defines a triangular bullet ‣ (U+2023).
