Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Putting a Bullet in the Middle of a Sentence.

Putting a Bullet in the Middle of a Sentence

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 17, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365

For design purposes, there may be a time when you want to place a bullet in the middle of a sentence or between two words. You cannot accomplish this by using the Bullets tool (Home tab of the ribbon, Paragraph group). Instead, you must work directly with the actual bullet character.

To insert a bullet, you can type it directly by holding down the Alt key and typing 0183 on the numeric keypad. If you prefer, you can follow these steps:

Position the insertion point where you want the bullet character to appear.
Display the Insert tab of the ribbon.
Click Symbol, in the Symbols group. Word displays a palette of various symbols you can insert.
If it is available in the palette, click the bullet character and skip the rest of these steps.
If the bullet character is not available, click More Symbols. Word displays the Symbols dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Symbol dialog box.

Locate the bullet character you want to insert and make sure it is selected (click on the character once).
Click on Insert. The bullet is inserted in your document.
Click on Close.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9769) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Putting a Bullet in the Middle of a Sentence.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is 9 - 0?

2022-02-12 12:32:22

Kiwerry

Thank you, Allen. An additional, widely useable shortcut on Windows devices is the hotkey " Windows + . ". It gives access to fairly comprehensive collections of emoticons👍, character-based emojis :-) and symbols Ω, see (see Figure 1 below) . The dialogue opens with the emoticon collection, but one of the other two collections can be selected in the header row. Within each collection, the bottom row allows access to groups of collection members, and if a group contains more members than can be displayed a scroll bar at the right hand edge can be used to explore the group.

In my experience, this useful shortcut works within most Windows programs, but purely text based editors (e.g. the VBA editor) can represent only the character based emojis correctly. My experience with this shortcut is limited to W10 and W11.

Figure 1. Symbol Selection Dialogue

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