In TextEdit or similar editors, is it possible to go to a previous bullet's indent level without a bullet?

Question

I have an issue is with bullets in a rich-text editor. If I want to put several paragraphs under one bullet, like this:

• Bullet one

• Bullet two paragraph one

  Bullet two paragraph two

• Bullet three

I can achieve this by typing ctrlReturn at the end of paragraph one (rather than Return). The beginning of the text that I type after that will indent properly inside the bullet rather than create a new bullet.

But my problem is doing that after a second-level bulleted list, like so:

• Bullet one

• Bullet two, first part

  • Inner bullet list, first item.
  • Inner bullet list, second item.

  Bullet two, second part

• Bullet three

I can't find any way to make the "Bullet two, second part" indent properly to the bullet level without a bullet. The ctrlReturn trick brings me to the inner bullet list level. Trying to tab back from there adds a bullet. Trying to remove the bullet by simply selecting and deleting it seems to work... until I add a new bullet down the list, at which point the bullet is restored.

Is it possible to continue the text of a bullet after a secondary bulleted list, and if so, how?

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I'm using Curio, which has text objects that are apparently based on Core Text (rich text editing), and I'm trying to work with bullet lists in it. For all intents and purposes, if there is a solution for TextEdit, it will probably work for me as well.

Answer 1

I want to answer your question, even though this thread is more than 5 years stale. I imagine this worked back then just the same.

The answer given before was likely not what you wanted. I wouldn't really want that either if there's a more simple way to manage. There is, so I will show you. It's not perfectly elegant, but much better I think than the other option.

Okay, so the way we go about this is to begin on our Bullet two, first part where we would actually use the ctrl Return trick before we put the inner list. Don't worry - we still add the inner list as usual, but just further down, and then move it. Once you have a couple of new lines at the "Bullet two, first part" level WITHOUT a bullet, then press Return and get a new one WITH a bullet. Add anything such as "Bullet two, second part", then Return then Tab to get your new indentation bullet.

Once you're here - you just add your Inner bullet list (the one for up above). Then you can highlight it and copy/paste up above where you wanted it. You can then put your "Bullet two, second part" bullet on the line below that where you left an empty line indented at the "Bullet two, first part" level.

Here's a GIF of the whole process to make it perfectly clear what is happening.

I will say, that there's still some caveats such as if you go to add another inner bullet item by pressing Return on the last one, it will break the whole thing. You'll need to be careful and try to remember the ctrl Return technique on those. Still probably preferable if you know what you're doing.

Answer 2

Many WYSWYG text editors and word processors try to anticipate your formatting intentions. It takes a bit of work to overcome this at times, selecting lists, deselecting lists, adding formatting after the fact, etc.

For a bit more control while working, you can manually insert bullets in your text along with using tabs. See Screenshot. Not using the list but rather setting your tabs manually and typing the bullets manually is a bit more work at first but gives you the control you need. This should work in most text editing environments.

option ⌥+8 will make a text bullet • (You can use any character you wish too either by typing the key combination or using the Character Viewer)

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