Bullet Point Symbols to Copy and Paste (• ‣ ◦ ▪)

The list dots you need, ready to copy. Plus one useful warning: on a web page, pasting bullets is not the same as making a list.

Tap a bullet to copy it

All of these are text symbols: they inherit the colour and size of your letters.

Dots

The • is the standard bullet. The middle dot · is considerably smaller and is meant to separate, not to head an item.

Shapes

Squares, diamonds and triangles, common at the second and third level of a list.

Marks and others

For to-do lists and checklists.

What is a bullet point?

The bullet (•) is the dot that heads each item in an unnumbered list. In Unicode it sits at code point U+2022, inside the General Punctuation block.

Its job is purely typographic: to mark where each item begins when the order does not matter. When the order does matter — steps in a recipe, positions in a ranking — the convention is to number, because a bullet carries no sense of sequence.

Unicode records several shapes because typographic tradition uses them to distinguish levels. The filled • heads the top level, the hollow ◦ the second and the square ▪ the third. It is not compulsory, but it is what browsers do by default with nested lists, so respecting that order makes the hierarchy legible without anyone having to explain it.

Pasting bullets is not making a list

This is the part almost no symbol page mentions, and it is worth knowing before you copy anything. A list written by pasting a • in front of each line looks like a list, but to the computer it is still a paragraph with dots in it. There are three consequences:

  • Screen readers do not recognise it. A real list is announced as “list of 5 items” and lets the user jump from one to the next; a fake list is read straight through, with a stray “bullet” dropped into the middle of each sentence.
  • The hanging indent breaks. If an item wraps onto a second line, that line starts flush against the margin, underneath the bullet, instead of aligning with the text above it.
  • It cannot be reordered or numbered automatically. Changing the order means moving the symbols by hand, and converting the list to a numbered one means retyping every line.

Fake list

<p>• First item<br>• Second item</p>

Real list

<ul>
  <li>First item</li>
  <li>Second item</li>
</ul>

In a real list you do not even have to write the symbol: the browser draws it for you, and CSS can swap it for whichever one you prefer. The same goes for Word and Google Docs, where typing an asterisk and a space at the start of a line creates a genuine list with automatic indentation — and, incidentally, a bullet that stays put when you change the font size.

So what is copying bullets for? For all the places where lists do not exist: an Instagram bio, a WhatsApp message, an email subject line, a filename, a form field, a spreadsheet cell, the alt text of an image. In those places the pasted symbol is the only option available, and it is a perfectly legitimate use.

The middle dot · is not a small bullet

The middle dot (U+00B7), also called an interpunct, looks like a shrunken bullet, which is why plenty of people press it into service as one. But it has jobs of its own, and in some contexts the two are not interchangeable.

Its commonest use in English typography is as an inline separator. It is the dot in a breadcrumb trail or a navigation strip — Home · Tools · Blog — and the one that divides the author from the date in the byline under a headline. It reads as a lighter pause than a slash or a vertical bar, which is exactly why editorial designers reach for it.

It also turns up in dictionaries, where it marks syllable divisions in a headword, and in scientific notation as a multiplication sign, where it is preferred over the cross because it cannot be confused with the letter x. Older British style once used it as a decimal point, which is why very old textbooks write 3·14 rather than 3.14 — a convention long since abandoned, but worth recognising if you are setting historical material.

For heading the items of a list, though, it is simply too small: at ordinary body sizes it is barely distinguishable from a full stop, and in a run of short items it disappears altogether. That is what the bullet • is for.

How to punctuate a bulleted list in English

Once the bullets are in place the usual question arrives: capital or lower case at the start of each item? Full stop at the end, semicolon, or nothing at all? Here is the honest answer, which most pages skip: the major style guides do not agree, so there is no single correct form. What every one of them does insist on is internal consistency — pick a pattern and hold it for the whole document.

Short fragments, no verb

Lower case, no punctuation at the end of any item. This is the most common treatment in modern web and technical writing.

The ingredients are:

• flour

• sugar

• two eggs

Fragments that complete the lead-in sentence

Lower case, with a semicolon after each item and a full stop on the last. Some guides also add “and” before the final item; others consider it redundant.

To take part you must:

• be eighteen or over;

• live in the borough;

• submit the form on time.

Items that are complete sentences

Initial capital and a full stop at the end of each. On this one every guide agrees.

• The deadline is Friday.

• Applications are reviewed in the order they arrive.

Where the guides part company is the middle case. The heavily punctuated pattern — semicolons throughout, “and” before the last item — comes out of legal and formal drafting, where a list is read as one continuous sentence broken across lines. Newer editorial and technical style guides increasingly drop it, arguing that the layout already does the work the semicolons were doing and that stray punctuation at the end of a line is visual noise. Both positions are defensible; what is not defensible is switching between them halfway down the page.

Two details that catch people out regardless of which guide they follow. First, if the lead-in sentence ends in a colon, do not repeat the colon inside the list. Second, keep the items grammatically parallel: if the first begins with a verb, they all should. Parallel structure does more for readability than any punctuation decision, and it is the one rule the style guides genuinely share.

How to type a bullet on each system

In a word processor it is almost always better to create the list than to paste the symbol.

Windows

Alt +7

Alt + 7 gives the bullet • directly.

Alt + 0149 does the same. The middle dot · is Alt + 0183.

macOS

⌥ Option +8

Option + 8 gives •; Option + 9 gives ◦.

The middle dot · is Option + Shift + 9.

★ Rarely documented

Linux

Compose +. +=

With the Compose key, for the bullet •.

Or Ctrl + Shift + U followed by 2022.

Word & Docs

* +space

Type an asterisk and a space: it creates a real list.

Better than pasting bullets: it keeps the indent and the numbering.

HTML

&bull;

Also &#8226;. The middle dot is &middot;.

For a list, use &lt;ul&gt; and &lt;li&gt;, not pasted bullets.

Mobile

Symbols keyboard

The bullet is usually on the second page of symbols.

If you cannot find it, copy it from this page.

Windows’ Alt + 7 is another MS-DOS survivor, like the Alt + 3 that gives a heart: in the original code page, position 7 was the system bell, and it was drawn on screen as a thick dot. That is why it still hands you a bullet today.

Frequently asked questions

How do I type a bullet point on my keyboard?
On Windows, Alt + 7 on the numeric keypad gives • directly, and Alt + 0149 does the same. On Mac it is Option + 8. On Linux, the Compose key followed by a full stop and an equals sign. And on any system you can tap it in the grid on this page to copy it.
What is the Unicode code for the bullet point?
The bullet • is U+2022, the white bullet ◦ is U+25E6 and the triangular ‣ is U+2023. The middle dot ·, which many people mistake for a bullet, is U+00B7 and is considerably smaller. In HTML they are written &bull; and &middot;.
What is the difference between • and ·?
Size and purpose. The bullet • (U+2022) is a large dot intended to head an item in a list. The middle dot · (U+00B7) is much smaller and works as a separator within a line — between tags, in a byline, or in a breadcrumb trail. It also has a few specialised typographic uses covered further down.
Can I paste bullets to make a list on a web page?
You can, but you should not. A list written by pasting • in front of each line looks like a list without being one: screen readers do not announce how many items there are or where the user is, and the text does not hang-indent when a line wraps. In HTML the right markup is <ul> with <li>; in Word, the list button. Copy-and-paste bullets are for places where real lists do not exist: a message, a social media bio, an email subject line.
Which bullet goes at each level of a list?
The most widespread typographic convention uses • at the first level, ◦ at the second and ▪ at the third, which is exactly what browsers apply by default to nested lists. It is not a binding rule, but following it helps the hierarchy read itself without explanation.
Do bullet points count as characters?
Yes, each one counts as a character, and the space that usually follows counts as another. In an Instagram bio or a subject line with a hard limit, a five-point list spends ten characters on decoration alone. You can measure it with our character counter.

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