Some guidance on bullets with help from Britney, Bridget and Brady, and Anna Nicole’s baby daddies

Do not capitalize the first letter of each bulleted item or use punctuation at the end of an entry in a list unless the introduction to the list ends with a colon or period and each entry in it is a complete and independent sentence. And if one bulleted item requires punctuation, they all do.

(For a refresher on whether a colon is required, please read my post on that subject.)

Also, unless the list is a sequence, begin each entry with a bullet, not a number.

In this example, punctuation is not needed at the end of the introduction or each entry, as the list and all of the bulleted items read like one complete sentence.

As Britney Spears, Anna Nicole Smith, and Bridget Moynahan were the three most searched for people on Yahoo! last week, it’s a fair assumption that American culture is most interested in women who

• shave their heads and enter rehab
• die in a casino’s hotel and then have a slew of men claiming to be their baby daddy
• carry Tom Brady’s love child

Often writers want to punctuate each entry with a semicolon or comma and add “and” to the end of the penultimate item. Doing so is wrong.

Again, this advice is based on The Chicago Manual of Style. The Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, for example, mandates colons (or a period) before every bulleted list, that each item in a list begins with a capital letter, and usually that each entry ends with a period.

The national holiday Americans celebrated this past Monday: when the possessive, plural, and plural possessive are all wrong

The difference between punctuating the possessive and the plural possessive can confuse a lot of writers. But in “Too Many Chiefs” in the Feb. 19 & 26, 2007 issue of The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg explains that it does not matter how one punctuates the federal holiday we celebrated in the United States last Monday.

According to some of the calendars and appointment books books floating around this office, Monday, February 19th, is Presidents’ Day. Others say it’s President’s Day. Still others opt for Presidents Day. Which is it? The bouncing apostrophe bespeaks a certain uncertainty. President’s Day suggests that only one holder of the nation’s supreme magistracy is being commemorated, presumably the first. Presidents’ Day hints at more than one, most likely the Sage of Mount Vernon plus Abraham Lincoln, generally agreed to be the greatest of them all. And Presidents Day, apostropheless, implies a promiscuous celebration of all forty-two: Jefferson but also Pierce, F.D.R. but also Buchanan, Truman but also Harding. To say nothing of the incumbent, of whom, perhaps, the less said the better.

So which is it? Trick question. The answer, strictly speaking, is none of the above. Ever since 1968, when, in one of the last gasps of Great Society reformism, holidays were rejiggered to create more three-day weekends, federal law has decreed the third Monday in February to be Washington’s Birthday. And Presidents’/'s/s Day? According to Prologue, the magazine of the National Archives, it was a local department-store promotion that went national when retailers discovered that, mysteriously, generic Presidents clear more inventory than particular ones, even the Father of His Country. Now everybody thinks it’s official, but it’s not.

So when is proper punctuation irrelevant? When the information it is punctuating is wrong.

When to introduce a list with a colon and when not to: A short primer

Colons are one of the most misused pieces of punctuation I encounter. In short, use a colon to introduce a list, but not if the list reads like a complete sentence (it does not matter if this sentence is broken down into bullet points).

• When to use a colon (the introduction to the list is a complete sentence): Last week’s top news stories featured a diverse group of people: Barack Obama, Anna Nicole Smith, and three naughty astronauts.
• When not to use a colon (many writers put one after “such as”): The top news stories from last week featured a diverse group of people, such as Barack Obama, Anna Nicole Smith, and three naughty astronauts.

As with all of the suggestions I provide on this website, some style manuals offer different guidance. Most of what I recommend is based on The Chicago Manual of Style. The Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, for example, mandates colons (or a period) before every bulleted list.

Use serial commas

In a series of three or more items, a comma separates each item in the list. If the last two entries are connected by a conjunction—usually “and” or “o”—a comma usually comes before the conjunction as well. That comma is known as the serial comma.

Associated Press style, however, mostly used by newspapers and magazines, omits the comma before the conjunction, probably to save space. (Obviously, when I write or edit for a publication that uses AP style, I don’t use the serial comma.)

As I’ve written about previously, the serial comma is one of the most contentious pieces of punctuation. Yes, people do argue about such matters, and not just when they are drunk and have finished bickering about Iraq, the Tuck Rule, and whether the American Idol judges are too nasty this year. (Note the use of the serial comma in that last sentence.)

I am in favor of using the serial comma for the simple reason that it reduces ambiguity. Take this example that I heard in an editing class at EEI Communications:

A man died. His will said that his estate “should be split between his sons: Gordon, Andy and Stewart.” The executrix divided the man’s estate evenly between the three men. Gordon, however, sued. He argued that the lack of a comma before “and” meant that the estate should be divided so he got one half of it and his brothers split the other half.

The judge agreed with Gordon; his share went from one-third of the estate to one-half of it. Andy and Stewart went from getting one-third each to one-quarter each.

If the father wanted his estate to be split evenly between his three sons, a serial comma would have ensured that happened. And if he wanted Gordon to have a larger share, specifying that disbursement (“Gordon gets half of my estate; Andy and Stewart each get a quarter of it”) would have made his intentions clearer. (The instructor claimed the story was true.)

If you want more details about arguments for and against using serial commas, read Wikipedia’s entry on the subject.

The Economist used a hyphen after an adverb ending in “ly”—did it err or am I missing something?

From Mr Bush’s first veto in the July 22, 2006 Economist (subscription required):

And a decision by Mr Bush in 2001 allows federally-funded scientists to experiment on the few dozen embryonic stem-cell “lines” that already existed then, which can be propagated in a laboratory [emphasis mine].

I don’t like pointing out grammatical mistakes unless I’m on the clock or they’re amusing (yes, I know that the capitalization of the tags on this site is inconsistent—it’s a software issue, however, and not a grammatical one). In fact, I try not to edit when I am reading for pleasure—it slows me down.

When The Economist breaks a convention, however, (and not just by using quirky British English) I run to my grammar books.

From the adverbs entry (p. 36) of The Economist Style Guide (remember when I wrote that this book was a good reference?):

Adverbs do not need to be linked to participles or adjectives by hyphens in simple constructions: The regiment was ill equipped for its task; The principle is well established; Though expensively educated, the journalist knew no grammar. But if the adverb is one of two words together being used adjectivally, a hyphen may be needed: The ill-equipped regiment was soon repulsed; All well-established principles should be periodically challenged. The hyphen is especially likely to be needed if the adverb is short and common, such as ill, little, much and well. Less-common adverbs, including all those that end -ly, are less likely to need hyphens: Never employ an expensively educated journalist [emphasis mine].

Did the impeccable Economist err or am I missing something?