Legal Writing

Daphne Gray-Grant, in her always-useful e-newsletter, Power Writing, says that bullets work because they

• Add structure and organization to your writing
• Provide many compelling entry points for skimmers and scanners
• Help simplify information (for the reader and writer)
• Emphasize main points
• Improve comprehension

Daphne provides some other good tips on bullets, although I follow a slightly different convention from the one she recommends. I use a colon to introduce a list only when the introductory sentence is grammatically complete. If it's not (as in my introductory sentence above), I leave the colon off. In short, if I could put a period, then I can put a colon.

(I picked up that habit from the Chicago Manual of Style, which I use in a copyediting course I teach. But there's absolutely no reason why business writers should follow it.)