Bullet to the heart …

Sometimes I’ll be reviewing something for a client who’s just not sure why the piece isn’t working. Often the message is unclear, the writing convoluted, the syntax out of whack – and we just need to begin again. But other times it’s all about catching the reader’s eye, making it easy for her to read the piece, and guiding her along.

I have a favorite weapon in dealing with this: the bullet. Almost everything is made better with the introduction of a bulleted list – except maybe a novel! Bullets:

• let you organize like things;

• call attention to those things;

• Eliminate some of the “fluff.”

What would you rather read? A paragraph of 6 or 7 sentences all strung together with absolutely no clue what the key points are. Or a nice bulleted list that’s introduced with a sentence and perhaps summarized with another. I pick the list!

Sure, you can overuse them. But in the pieces I see, people never do. And with the autoformats available in Word today you can find a catchy bullet to suit your document, if that’s your style.

Now if the grammar is a train wreck and the message hidden, even a bullet can’t save the piece. But otherwise, give my magic weapon a try. It’s powerful.