- Law 20: Hang bullets and numbers in lists.
Using bulleted or numbered lists is a great way
to break up paragraphs of text
and present information in an organized, chunked, way.
That's going to help readers digest it
and better understand the information.
Numbered lists should be used when you're presenting
a list of steps, or items in some kind of a sequence
where the order of the items is important.
Bulleted lists should be used when you're presenting
a list of information and order's not important at all.
Whether you're using bulleted lists or numbered lists,
you should hang the bullets or numbers
to preserve and create a strong aligned edge
for the data in your lists.
What does it mean to hang bullets and numbers?
Well, let's look at some examples
to help explain the concept.
In this first example, we have a bulleted list.
We've got some information here.
But the bullets have not been hung.
In the second example, we have the exact same list,
but the difference here is that the bullets have been hung.
You can see that each bullet is actually set
outside of the main text block.
The bullets have actually been scooted out to the left.
Looking at the first example, do you see
how the first line of each bulleted item
actually appears to be indented?
It's not, but this visual effect is being caused
by the amount of space that's surrounding each bullet.
The text block is mathematically aligned.
It's aligned to the left.
But the text does not look aligned,
and therefore, it doesn't look right.
The effect here is that the left edge
looks ragged and disorganized.
But now, in the second example, we've actually
hung the bullets and by doing this,
we've created a clean, hard left edge for our text.
The left edge is strong and aligned.
It looks professional and it looks correct.
Let's move on to numbered lists.
Here's a numbered list, and the numbers have not been hung.
Here's the same list, but this time,
the numbers are properly hung off the left edge.
What a difference.
A strong left alignment is now being created
because we've moved the numbers outside of the text block
and that allows the text to be
properly visually left-aligned.
It's also important to understand
how to correctly align numbers in a numbered list.
Numbers should always be aligned on the decimal point,
even if that decimal point is implied and not visible.
Now, this becomes really important when you have
lists of information that contain single digits,
double digits, and maybe even triple digit numbers.
Here's an example of a numbered list
that contains 12 items.
The numbers have been properly hung off the left edge,
just like we talked about earlier.
But the numbers are not properly aligned.
Now, in this example, same list with the same list items,
the numbers have also been hung off the left edge,
but now the numbers are properly aligned.
They're aligned on the decimal point.
The numbers here create a strong right-edge alignment,
and the text creates a strong left-edge alignment.
And now, the text and the numbers in this list
are all correctly aligned and look great.
You might be thinking, "Well, but those numbers
"don't have decimal points."
And it's true that there are no visible
decimal points here.
But remember, there are always implied
invisible decimal points after all whole numbers,
and that's what you want to align on.
Now, learning how to use tabs in your
desktop publishing software is going to
make your life a lot easier when it comes to
properly formatting lists of information.
You want to learn how to properly use all the different tabs
in your software, and that means
using left-aligned tabs, right-aligned tabs,
center-aligned tabs, and decimal-aligned tabs.
They all exist, and if you take the time
and learn how to use them properly,
you'll be so glad you did,
and you're going to save yourself a lot of time
and a lot of headaches.
Let's summarize.
Whenever you're setting bulleted and numbered lists,
make sure that your text alignments
are visually strong and intact.
Bullets should be aligned with bullets.
Numbers should be aligned with numbers.
And text should be aligned with text.
Numbers should always be aligned on their decimal points,
even if these decimal points are not visible.
Remember, they're still there.
Hanging the bullets and numbers in your lists
provides proper visual alignment for your text.
This attention to detail is going to take your documents
to the next level professionally
and they're going to look great.
That's law 20: Hang bullets and numbers in lists.