It's a hot take but one that I want to give. Bullet points are lazy. Why?
Don’t get me wrong. Bullet points certainly serve their purpose when breaking up long-form content, highlighting key takeaways, listing product features and benefits, etc. But in addition to the reasons above, bullet points muddle context. Look how easy it is to miss this paragraph where I give bullet points their due credit for clear use cases.
I could end this article right now since I already gave you my reasons in the bullet points, but I should probably strengthen my case a little.
Bullet points take up space.
Have you ever read an article that basically has a bullet list in every section? It’s really irritating, especially on mobile. You’re just scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling…kind of reading but not really retaining. If a topic is that modular, consider making it a more compact and creative infographic instead. It’ll be much more visually appealing.
Bullet points lack depth.
The point of a bullet is to boil down a sentence to just the essential words. That’s great, except when every other paragraph becomes a bullet list and you lose all the substance in between the lines. Try to hit a challenging word count while relying heavily on bullet points. Having trouble? Of course you are, because you’re not really writing anything.
Bullet points kill flow.
Yes, readers want to scan—but they also still want to read. Don’t rob them of that experience by feeding them diced content. Anyone can publish a generic article driven by bullet points, but it takes a true writer to build rapport with readers using more advanced techniques like pace, tone, alliteration, imperfect rhyming and thoughtful word placement, all baked into marketing content.
Bullet points are soooo borrrringggg.
You generally don’t see bullet points in the most moving pieces of writing, such as investigative journalism and human-interest stories. Marketing is obviously an entirely different type of writing, but you still need it to be engaging. The next time you read a long form feature story that gets and keeps your attention, pick out one thing you like about the writing and try to incorporate that in place of bullet points in your content marketing.
