Q. My colleague and I are having a debate about bulleted lists (I can almost feel you rolling your eyes at yet another list question). We are debating whether something like “Be proactive” and other imperative sentences deserve a period when written as part of a vertical list. What’s your take on this particular dilemma?
A. If this is the only list in your document, and all the items are as short as this one, you could get away with breaking style and omitting the punctuation, but if there are other lists in the same document that cry out for periods, this one should have them as well. (Rolling our eyes? What a thought.)