Grant Rettke over at Wisdom and Wonder has helped me resolve a long standing conundrum. When I have a list
- like
- this
I can never decide whether or not to end each list item with a period. I can adduce compelling arguments for both choices so I’m always conflicted. Rettke says to always end a list item with a period. The reason, he says, is so that text-to-speech software will pause at the end of each list item rather than running them on.
I never use text-to-speech but I’m willing to concede that someone else reading my writing might want to for various reasons so my new rule is to end the list items with a period. Thanks for clearing that up, Grant.