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main: add guidance on bullet lists to style guide #4504

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merged 1 commit into from
Mar 27, 2025

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ralfhandl
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Fixes #4502

Checked the first ten search results on "bullet lists and periods" and came up with the included recommendation.

The checked guidelines agree on the first rule (full sentences) and second rule (words and short phrases).

The third rule (complete a stem sentence) is the majority recommendation. Another mentioned style is to end each completing bullet list item except the last two with a semicolon, end the second to last with a semicolon followed by the word "and" or "or", depending on which kind of logic the list expresses, and end the last bullet list item with a period. I find this style as difficult to read as it is to describe, so I opted against it 😎

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@lornajane lornajane left a comment

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I suggest that we automate the checks for this and any other aspects of the style guide that we actually care about. Since we don't have editorial staff, it's unlikely that these guidelines will be observed without some automated assistance.

@handrews
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Thanks for the research and write-up, @ralfhandl ! That's going above and beyond 🙂

@lornajane this is still tremendously valuable to me when making changes and dsicussing reviews. What happens is that one person writes it one way, and another suggests it be changed to a different way. With this update, we can quickly resolve the discrepancy without having to debate it.

I honestly don't care if these style guide things are ever automated. I care that they help us stop wasting time discussing them more than once. As someone who writes a lot of specification text, this stuff is a major factor for me when you add it all up.

@lornajane lornajane merged commit eb1edd6 into OAI:main Mar 27, 2025
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@ralfhandl ralfhandl deleted the main-style-guide-bullet-lists branch March 27, 2025 17:37
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Style Guide: Periods at the end of bullet lists?
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