Every month you'll get news and analysis of publications standards, trends, and practices. When it's not recognized as such by the reader. A good displayed list is the mental equivalent of a line of cheerful ducklings behind their sensible mom on their way to an invigorating dip. A short series of items can often be run smoothly into text, but lists longer than eight lines or so tend to stray in the reader's mind from the preceding thoughts.
Lists establish either sequential or coordinate relationships among ideas or facts.
But if there's no reason to emphasize the number of items or their order, and if you won't be referring to the items by number later in the text, use bullets instead. In lists with 10 or more numbers, the periods should be aligned. For example, a square bullet could be used for the main elements in the list and a star-shaped bullet could be used for the subsections. Care should be taken not to use too many types of bullets within a single document. A Lifetime Guide to Flawless Business Writing Make items parallel in form and grammar Making elements in a list parallel when they're not can be annoying, but it's worth the trouble.