A thread on The Warrior Forum popped up recently about listing 2 benefits in each bullet -- something I've never heard discussed anywhere before.

Bruce posted this example from John Carlton's Rodale Sex Letter:

My brief analysis was you get them reading one bullet and you get to lay 2 benefits on them. The first is dimentionalized and the second is more of a teaser...

Anyone doing this already? Heard anyone discuss this? Thoughts?

It's called a benefit on top of benefit bullet.

John calls it a one-two bullet.

Some times his bullets have 3 or more benefits.

It's the way everyone should write....

Peace.

Ryan Healy has a great blogpost on this type of bullet. Read it and you'll write better bullets.

A.

Ryan's example seems more traditional, I've written similar bullets:

As he says, challenging and expanding the first bullet.

I think it's just John's writing that make his feel much more powerful.

An interesting concept, but I think the inherent danger would be turning your bullets into paragraphs instead of a quick point. I would think if the bullet gets too long, you would lose the benefit of stopping the eye of folks who scan.

It does have me thinking more about how I write bullets and it would seem pieces with more than one list would benefit from using both word phrases and "belief expansion".

Great find of the blog link.

There is nothing wrong with paragraph bullets!

As a matter of fact, Clayton says if you have the room, make them paragraphs... each with a sub-head.

Yeah the visual layout of the bullet has as much to do with it's scanability as anything. Just the act of indenting and putting a little bullet helps.