Bullet Character (•) in Professional Writing
The bullet “•” is a dedicated Unicode punctuation character used in many list and separator layouts. Its visual role is typographic: list structure, indentation, spacing, and accessibility should be handled consistently by the document or interface rather than by substituting arbitrary lookalike symbols.
Use a real list or the dedicated bullet character when a bullet is required; keep indentation and list structure consistent instead of substituting random dot-like characters.
Key details
Important caveats
Accessibility Boundary
When a semantic list is available in the publishing system, preserve that list structure rather than relying only on manually typed bullet glyphs.
Further guidance
Character Difference
Unicode identifies BULLET as U+2022.
Use
Use bullets for parallel list items or where the governing layout/style defines a bullet separator.
Sources and evidence
Sources are shown with the role they play in this guide. Historical or style-sensitive claims are kept within the evidence boundary described above.
- General Punctuation — Unicode Names List (opens in a new tab)Unicode Consortium · Unicode identities for directional quotation marks and related punctuation characters