Use Headings, Lists and Bullet Points to Make Information Accessible

People in my email classes are often surprised that I recommend using lists and bullet points as a way to quickly convey information in email. I suspect that they assume that I’d think that using bullet points is cheating, that I wouldn’t approve because bullets don't use complete sentences and paragraphs. But the biggest challenge in email communication is often just getting your message heard and using bullet points or lists can be a highly effective way to condense what might otherwise require several sentences or paragraphs of text-- which would likely go unread-- into a few bullet points that can be easily scanned and absorbed.

As is often the case with good ideas, there are a couple of caveats. Like email itself, bullet points and lists are great for passing along information but they would be an extremely insensitive way to convey emotional or otherwise sensitive information. Please never send anything like this:

Dear Bill:

• Layoffs
• You're fired
• Two weeks severance
• The guard will escort you from the building
  

Of course, personnel issues aren’t a good topic for email anyway. But most things that are appropriate for email and contain a lot of facts, steps, dates, etc. can make effective use of bullets.

That doesn’t mean you can totally ignore the rules of grammar and punctuation. Bulleted lists need to be introduced by phrases that combine with each individual item to create a complete sentence and they should be set off by a colon. They also need to use parallelism, which means that each bullet uses the same tense and follows the same basic construction-- which is easier to show than to explain. One place that I often see problems with parallelism in bullet points is in resumes. People will list their qualifications by saying something like:

In ten years as a sales manager I:

• Supervised a staff of 12
• Managing customer relationship database
• Excellent communication skills

My example is pretty obviously wrong, but it’s the sort of thing people do all the time. Whether you’re writing an email, a resume, a PowerPoint presentation or anything else with bullet points, you should always go back to review your list to make sure that it’s made up of similar items and that they use the same tense. The first place to look is at the verbs you are using. In the example above “supervised” is in the past tense and “managing” is a gerund. (Don’t worry what that means, just look for the “ing” ending.) The third bullet point, “Great leadership skills,” doesn’t even have a verb, so we’re clearly in trouble here.

Another way to check to make sure that your list makes sense is to read the introductory phrase with each of the bulleted items to check that they form a coherent sentence. In our case “In ten years as a sales manager I supervised a staff of 12” passes muster, but “In ten years as a sales manager I excellent communication skills” doesn’t exactly instill confidence. To fix this problem we need to make sure that each bullet point has a verb and that we choose a consistent tense. Something like this works:

In ten years as a sales manager I:

• Supervised a staff of 12
• Managed our customer relationship database
• Demonstrated excellent communication skills
  

Headings and lists work the same way as bullet points (which are really just a kind of list) to organize your message and make it easy for your readers to scan your email and pick out the pieces of information that they can disregard or that they need to pay further attention. Both require the use of parallelism in order to make sense. Headings allow you to organize long or complicated messages thematically, while lists allow you to serve up several ideas or pieces of information quickly and in an easy to digest format.

As with just about anything, you run some risk when you use headings, lists and bullet points in email. One danger is that you may be trying to do too much in email to begin with and that you overwhelm your readers. If your message is so complicated that you need to use headings you should probably think about whether email is an appropriate format to begin with. But in some cases you have no other choice. Another potential problem is that all of the items in a list tend to look as though they carry the same importance, so you need to be sure that you’re clear about anything that’s absolutely critical. Finally, reducing anything that is emotionally involved to bullets will trivialize what you have to say and is likely to alienate your readers. Think of the example of the layoff notice that I used earlier, or check out the PowerPoint version of the Gettysburg address (http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/) for a supreme example of why you should be careful about reducing important topics to bulleted lists (and why PowerPoint isn’t the proper tool for every task).