Five tips on writing better bullets
by Gordon Graham, That White Paper Guy
Most white paper writers use bulleted lists to break up long chunks of text.
But are your lists as effective as they could be?
Here are five tips to help make every bullet count.
♦ Better bullets tip #1: Order bullets for quick scanning
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"Copywriters write numbered or bulleted lists in order of importance. "The first is usually the most important, and the last the least important," says Anne Holland. |
But based on years of research in eye tracking and readability at MarketingSherpa, she says, "The eye doesn't see that way."
People reading on-screen skim, scan and skip... often right past the middle bullets in a list! But they generally do take in the last point.
So Anne's recommendation is to reorder your bullets in the same order that readers unconsciously assign, like so:
- Most important point
- Second most important point
- Less important point (may be skipped)
- Less important point (may be skipped)
- Third most important point.
The bottom line: If you have more than three items in a list, tuck the weakest in the middle, not at the end.
♦ Better bullets tip #2: Write every bullet in parallel
Bullets are most effective when every item is expressed in the same form. This is called parallel construction.
From the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, page 109, "Parallelism ensures that elements of sentences that are similar in purpose are also similar in structure."
For example, consider this short list in non-parallel construction:
- Always do the first things first.
- It's important to do the second thing after the first.
- Last things should be left until last.
Although all the information is there, it's given in a roundabout way that makes a reader work hard to get at the content.
Here is a better way to format this list in parallel:
- First, do the first thing.
- Next, do the second thing.
- Finally, do the last thing.
See how the parallel version is faster and easier to read?
♦ Better bullets tip #3: Use an alternate order when it makes sense
Sometimes the default "most to least important" isn't actually the best way to organize your list.
Here are some other methods and when to use them.
Ordering method |
Use for |
Alphabetical |
Equally important items, like a list of clients or contributors |
Chronological: |
A timeline or history |
Familiarity: |
To introduce something unfamiliar |
Geographical: |
A range of places, |
Process: |
A step-by-step process, |
Size: |
A range of sizes |
♦ Better bullets tip #4: Avoid the Russian Novel Syndrome
Did you ever read a story where everyone's name starts with the same letter?
In Crime and Punishment, for example, there's Polina, Porfiry, Pulcheria and Pyotr. This is the dreaded Russian Novel Syndrome.
Don't get me started on the names in Lord of the Rings?!
Try to avoid that in your bulleted lists. Make sure every item starts with a different word and a different letter.
Otherwise, the words can all blur together in the eyes of a distracted reader.
♦ Better bullets tip #5: Rewrite bullets, just like text
Your first shot at a list of bullets may not be perfect.
I know mine aren't. Even for this short article, I rearranged the order of the bullets and added two more before I was finished.
So don't be afraid to rewrite and tweak your bullets carefully.
It's worth the effort, since even busy readers are likely to take in a list of bullets.
Written by Gordon Graham, this article appeared in the
May 2011 edition of the WhitePaperSource Newsletter.
