Crisgal, I spent a bit of time studying sources and came up with the following...
Different publishing houses' Style Guides have different �rules' on the use of bullet points, as on much else regarding document layout. Having studied many of these, I believe the following is a reasonable summary of the common elements in general use. ( In order to avoid over-complexity, many people also apply a 6 x 6 rule...that is, have no more than six such points and use no more than six words in each.)
1) After the opening words which introduce the list, always put a colon (:).
2) On the next line, without indenting, type your first bullet (Hold down Alt key and type 0149 on the keypad to the right of your keyboard) followed by a single space then the word/s required. If these flow onto a second line, do not put a bullet at the start of that line.
3) What happens next depends on the length of the points you are making.
a) If they are single words, do not use an opening capital letter unless they are names and use no punctuation throughout until you put a full stop at the end of the last one.
i) Five key elements of good leadership are:
� charisma
� practicality
� responsibility
� respect
� vision.
ii) The planets closest to the sun are:
� Mercury
� Venus
� Earth
� Mars
� Jupiter
� Saturn.
b) If they are phrases, do not use an opening capital and put a semi-colon (;) at the end of each point and a full stop at the end of the last.
At the recent election:
� the Conservative candidate won 8,679 votes;
� the Labour candidate won 6,872 votes;
� the LibDem candidate won 1,268 votes;
� only 42.5% of the electorate voted;
� there were 49 spoilt papers.
c) If they are sentences, use an opening capital and a full stop for each.