

(AP Photo/David Goldman) Vice President Joe Biden holds up his notes during the vice presidential debate with Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan, of Wisconsin at Centre College, Thursday, Oct. Vice President Joe Biden holds up his notes during the vice presidential debate with Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. It works perfectly in academic settings and even under the brightest lights of American politics. Anyone can assemble a list of bullets together. It’s one of the easiest ways to present information. It’s not hard to see how the bulleted list has become so ubiquitous. He said if we could do that, everyone at Apple would use this product. He went to the LaserWriter down the hall and brought back our printout, marked up with a box around the text, and bullets on each of the subheads on the printout. That revolution would impact the way we give talks and presentations for decades. When he gave a demonstration to Guy Kawasaki and Alain Rossman at Apple, the concept of bullet points leaped off the screen where it started to get new life. In the 1980s, the ‘bullet point’ was mentioned as a means to helping improve the user experience in software.Īt the time, developer Dave Winer was working on MORE, an outline application for Macintosh computers.

Occasionally, bullets would find themselves baked into the designs of newspaper advertisements where they mainly served to help underscore brand features in what would otherwise be empty, white space. The bullet point really came into its own in the 1950s when it was included in the New York News Type Book - a style guide used by the New York News to communicate design principles for ad copy. It’s no coincidence that the physical traits of bullets morphed into the literary aspirations of bullet points that connote speed and directness. Then, it often appeared as a square, rotated forty-five degrees like this: ◆įor the majority of the recorded history of publishing, the ‘bullet’ literally correlated to the round shape of munitions like minnie balls and grapeshot fired from cannons and muskets. See also midpoint.īut, the bullet has actually been part of the writing and printing process since the invention of the Gutenberg press. Bullets are commonly hung in the margin to mark items in a list, or centered to separate larger blocks of text. In The Elements of Typographic Style, author Robert Bringhurst relates the bullet to modern-day typography:Ī fat midpoint, not always round, used as a typographic flag. There is not a wealth of information that corroborates the history of the bullet point, and there are only a few places that contain a lively discussion of its origins.īut, there are a few key points in history where its usage starts to evolve from publishing to computing.
Use bullets condense text software#
Bullet points introduced into presentation software changed the way we communicate information.Bullets are the perfect left-aligned way to present clear and concise content.Bullet points have a fascinating, oft-debated history dating back to the 1400s.How about we explore the awesome history and copywriting benefits of the bullet point: But, nothing conveys information more clearly in a visually appealing manner than a nice, solid bullet point. More often than not, when you’re dealing with 140 characters or less, it helps to throw in an emoticon, gif, or a numbered list. In a world that moves at the speed of social media, it’s imperative to get your point across quickly. Throughout the coming weeks, we’ll explore how the practice of taking notes can improve your creativity and all the work you set out to accomplish. This post is part of our ongoing series, “Taking Note,” outlining the storied history and styles of note-taking.
