Bullet (typography)

Appearance and common forms

Bullets appear in many shapes and sizes. Common forms include:

• Filled circle (dot) — the classic bullet character, often represented by the Unicode symbol •.
• Hollow circle or ring, squares, dashes and arrows — alternate glyphs chosen for style or emphasis.
• Custom icons such as checkmarks or images, used where visual meaning is important.

In digital fonts a bullet is a specific glyph; some environments refer to it as a glyph or symbol. Many systems provide a dedicated bullet character for consistent rendering across platforms.

Uses and best practices

Bullets are best when items are short, parallel in structure, and of roughly equal importance. They improve readability for instructions, features, lists of examples, or summaries. Avoid overusing bullets for long paragraphs or complex sentences; numbered (ordered) lists are preferred when sequence or ranking matters.

Technical and accessibility notes

Use semantic markup (for example, <ul> and <li>) so assistive technologies announce lists correctly. Screen readers often signal the number of items; decorative custom bullets should not replace structural HTML. Styling can change bullet appearance without altering semantics.

History and etymology: The term "bullet" likely arose from the small, round shape resembling a pellet. Printers and typesetters adopted the mark to separate list items long before digital word processing made it ubiquitous.