How to Punctuate Items Listed in a Table Cell or Unordered List

Punctuation of table cell or unordered list items presents a special problem in technical writing since more often than not such lines include technical specs.

Punctuation questions, like whether to end each line with a period or not, acquires a special significance since

Parallelism

“Parallelism” is one of those cardinal rules in technical writing.

In plain English, all lines should “look the same” to aid comprehension and retention.

If one line ends with a period, you don’t want to end the next list item with nothing, a comma, or a semi-colon.

Here is an example of what you should avoid:

One solution to this problem of “unevenness” is to “normalize” the text and make it all read-alike. For example:

But what about the periods? In this case, you can eliminate them easily.

Yet things are not always that simple.

In complex “spec sheets” that contain 20 or 50-row tables, short text fragments (like “12 Volts, 3 Amps”) are thrown together with full sentences or sentence fragments like “WARNING: When selected, this option deletes all User Access codes” and “45 or 67 for all RT687 transformers”.

Then the issue of proper punctuation that preserves “parallelism” really becomes a problem:

The solution first of all depends on the specific Style Guidelines of your company, if you work for one. If you’re working on your own as a freelance tech writer, then you need to make an intelligent choice that you can defend successfully if challenged by the client.

One good way of doing it is to take refuge in the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications. People respect the authority of Microsoft for a good reason – it’s a company that did a lot of thinking on these issues.

For example, on the issue of list punctuation, Microsoft warns against using any commas at the end of list items if they consist of short terms and sentence fragments. Microsoft also frowns upon the use of “and” after the penultimate list item:
CORRECT:

• Resistors
• Capacitors
• Transistors
• Diodes

INCORRECT

• Resistors,
• Capacitors,
• Transistors, and
• Diodes.

However if the list includes procedural descriptions that start with an action verb in nominal case (do this, do that), then Microsoft allows commas and periods:

CORRECT

• Create a new user.
• Add, edit, or delete an access code.
• Normalize the database and then refresh the screen.

When single-word terms and sentences or sentence fragments are included within the same list or table cell, however, things get a bit uncomfortable:

LIST OF THINGS TO DO (Unparallel Construction)

• Cleanup
• Shower
• Take the dog to the vet.
• Call Harry and ask Sunday’s schedule.

When faced with such mixed-content, re-write the content so that the list once again has a “parallel construction” and then use punctuation accordingly:

LIST OF THINGS TO DO (Parallel Construction)

• Clean the refrigerator.
• Take a shower.
• Take the dog to the vet.
• Call Harry and ask for Sunday’s schedule.

MORE INFO