Now that we have decided that commas shouldn't be at the end of line(?). Should each line begin with a capital letter?
This again is a matter of style. The past convention in the several variations of English that I'm familiar with specifies capital letters if the list item is a complete sentence and lower case if the list item is a word or phrase. (I'll leave out the long explanation of why.) However, this looks inconsistent to most people and is being superceded -- especially in computer documentation -- with the convention of beginning each list item with a capital letter, regardless of whether it's a sentence or not. Therefore I recommend that we begin each list item with a capital letter. (But again, like list punctuation, this is not worth taking the time to fix in existing docs, unless we are revising the docs anyway.)
More on list punctuation -- the "rule" is:
If any item in a list is a complete sentence, all of the items in the list end with a full stop (period).
If no item in the list is a sentence, all items end with no punctuation.
Most numbered lists are instructions. Instructions normally consist of complete sentences, so they end in periods. For example:
1. Do this. 2. Do that. 3. Do something else.
Many bullet lists are phrases only, and so do not take periods at the ends of the list items. (Other bullet lists have a mixture of sentences and phrases, and others are all sentences; in both of these cases, they end in period.) Some people think this means that these lists are punctuated inconsistently, although they are in fact not (they are consistent with a rule that most people don't know). So I have seen docs in which *all* list items -- whether sentences or not -- have periods at the end. This is a convention we could use, if we choose to. Personally I prefer the "rule" above, but I don't mind using the "all items end in periods" convention if people prefer it.
I'm only fussy about punctuation when it affects the meaning, or can cause ambiguity or other confusion, as anyone who has read my "Escape from the Grammar Trap" article knows. http://jeanweber.com/about/grammartrap.htm
Regards, Jean
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