Lists are helpful for breaking content up into manageable steps or chunks, making it easier to for users to scan.
Lists should be bulleted to make them easier to read. Long lists can be written as a paragraph with a lead-in sentence if it looks better.
List items start with a lowercase letter and have no period at the end. Use lists to present steps, groups, or sets of information.
Give context for the list with a brief introduction. You can use bullet points to make text easier to read.
Unordered lists
Things to keep in mind when using basic unordered lists:
you always use a lead-in line
you always use a colon after the lead-in line
the bullets make sense running on from the lead-in line
you use lowercase at the start of the bullet
you don’t use more than one sentence per bullet point — use commas, dashes, or semicolons to expand on an item
you don’t put “or” or “and” after the bullets
links appear within the text and not as the whole bullet
there is no period after the last bullet point
you try to use only 3 to 7 items in a list
Ordered lists
Things to keep in mind when using basic ordered lists:
Use numbered steps instead of bullet points to guide a user through a process when the order of the steps is important.
You don’t need a lead-in line and you can use links in steps.
Each step ends in a period because each step should be a complete sentence.