Writing lists

Writing lists in reports improves the readability of a legal nurse consultant’s report. Lists make it easy to cluster information together in a format that can be quickly scanned.

A list is useful for breaking up a long sentence into a more reader friendly format. Writing lists breaks up the style and flow of a report and create a more interesting page.

Correct format for Writing Lists

Note that you should skip a line before and after the bulleted items.

Different types of lists are punctuated in different manners.

Long sentence converted to a list

The nurse had an assignment that consisted of

• a man with colon cancer,
• a woman with pancreatic cancer,
• a man with congestive heart failure, and
• a woman with pneumonia.

Notice that the items are not capitalized, just as they would not be if they were found within a long sentence and there is no colon before the list. The items have commas after them, just as they would if they were in a sentence.

List of items that would not be found in a sentence

At the time of discharge, she had these diagnoses:

• aplastic anemia
• diabetes
• congestive heart failure
• hypertension
• failure to thrive
• stage IV sacral pressure ulcer
• stage II left heel ulcer
• Alzheimer’s disease

Only proper names are capitalized. Since this is not a reformatted sentence, there is a colon at the beginning of the list and no period at the end.

Long items that do not fit well into a sentence

The doctor’s findings were:

• She had four fractured ribs on the left side and two fractured ribs on the right side.
• Her pelvis had an open book fracture.
• There were contusions of both lungs.
• She had transverse process fractures of L1, L2, L3, S1, S2 and S3.

The introductory sentence has a colon, and each item is a complete sentence. Another way to write this is to separate each item with a semicolon. In that case, items are not capitalized.

The doctor’s findings were:

• she had four fractured ribs on the left side and two fractured ribs on the right side;
• her pelvis had an open book fracture;
• there were contusions of both lungs; and
• she had transverse process fractures of L1, L2, L3, S1, S2 and S3.

Writing lists make them useful tools for breaking up text and organizing material in an interesting way.

Pat Iyer is President of The Pat Iyer Group. She has written, coauthored or edited over 800 books, chapters, articles, case studies, webinars or online courses.

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