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 capitalized 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:
-
condition A
point
point
condition B
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 should not appear in a list. In most cases, it will be taking the place of a colon or other appropriate punctuation.