In Markdown, you can create unordered lists using any of three characters as the “bullets”: asterisk (*), hyphen (-), or plus (+). Why all three? More or less: why not? Better to let people choose the character that feels most natural to them. I know a lot of Markdown users choose different characters for different levels of hierarchical lists, and that went into the original thinking as well.
I’ve always been curious which list markers people actually use, so I did a poll on Twitter. The results:
- 42% Asterisk (*)
- 54% Hyphen (-)
- 04% Plus (+)
For what it’s worth, I’m a hyphen user. I’m not against using a plus, because it still feels natural. But I can’t understand using an asterisk, when they’re used so much elsewhere in Markdown.