Bulleted and numbered lists

Bulleted and numbered lists are an important part of the general style in Radiopaedia.org and we have some general rules that should be followed.

Lists

Lists exist to highlight important content to the reader and therefore tend to be fragments of sentences (not complete sentences). When creating a list item, the first letter should not be capitalised and the point should not end with punctuation (a comma or full-stop/period). Read more about capitalization. 

The only time when a list item should have terminal punctuation is if the content is really a sentence (in which case you should probably consider taking it out of a list) or where there is a terminal colon indicating a sub-list.

An example of a list:

• first item
• second item
• third item with a list:
  • sub-list item one
  • sub-list item two

Bulleted lists

Bulleted lists are the commonest use-case at Radiopaedia.org and a great way to highlight content to a reader.

Numeric lists

Numeric lists should only be used when the order of the list is important to the reader, e.g. when describing the types of choledochal cysts.

Mixed lists

Mixing numbers and bullets is perfectly fine providing the numeric list is used correctly:

1. condition A
   • point
   • point
2. condition B
3. condition C

Lists with headings

In some circumstances, a list will contain headings. This is common in anatomy articles or, when listing staging or classifications. This is one of the few cases where bulleted lists can contain bold text, e.g.:

• arterial supply: example
• venous supply: example 2

The emboldened text will be followed by a colon which should also be bold.

Parentheses in lists

Parentheses are used sparingly in lists and usually surround percentages, preceding the colon if need be e.g.:

• hyperdense (68%)
• hypodense (12%): due to protein
• isodense (3-7%) 
  • soft tissue
  • tumor

If parentheses are used outwith this setting, it is usually in error and the list item should be reworded to use a colon or other punctuation.

Dashes in lists

In most cases, a dash or hyphen shouldn't appear in a list. In most cases, it will be taking the place of a colon or other appropriate punctuation.