Science, Technology and Engineering

Academic Language and Learning

Setting up a list

If you wish to set up an indented list there are two basic ways of doing this. The main problem that students run into here is one of punctuation. The two methods are set out below.

Method A - Example

There are several types of metamorphism and these include:

• contact-metamorphism caused by the heat of igneous intrusions;
• dislocation-metamorphism caused by stress; and
• regional-metamorphism in active segments of the crust.

The key element of this way of presenting material is that there is only one sentence. It begins with There and finishes with crust. Therefore there can be no capital letters in between, no full stops and the material must read as a single complete sentence.

Note the use of the colon (:) and the semi-colons (;).

Method B - Example

There are several types of metamorphism and these are outlined below.

• Contact-metamorphism is caused by the heat of igneous intrusions.
• Dislocation-metamorphism is the result of stress.
• Regional-metamorphism takes place in active segments of the crust.

Here we have the passage rewritten such that instead of one sentence we now have four. Each of the types of metamorphism is expressed as a complete sentence (in Method A each type was expressed as part of a sentence).

Both methods are correct - just make sure that you do not have elements of both methods in your list.