Help:Lists

List basics

Media wiki offers three types of lists. Ordered lists, unordered lists, and definition lists. In the following sections, ordered lists are used for examples. Unordered lists would give corresponding results.

wikitext	rendering
* Lists are easy to do: ** start every line * with a star more stars mean * deeper levels	Lists are easy to do: start every line with a star more stars mean deeper levels
A newline in a list marks the end of the list. Of course you can start again.	A newline in a list marks the end of the list. Of course you can start again.
# Numbered lists are good ## very organized ## easy to follow	Numbered lists are good very organized easy to follow
* You can also break lines like this	You can also break lines like this
; Definition lists ; item : definition ; semicolon plus term : colon plus definition	Definition lists item definition semicolon plus term colon plus definition
* Or create mixed lists # and nest them #* like this #; definitions #: work: #; apple #; banana #: fruits	Or create mixed lists and nest them like this definitions work: apple banana fruits

Paragraphs in lists

For simplicity, list items in wiki markup cannot be longer than a paragraph. A following blank line will end the list and reset the counter on ordered lists. Separating unordered list items usually has no noticeable effects.

Paragraphs can be forced in lists by using HTML tags. Two line break symbols, <br /><br />, will create the desired effect. So will enclosing all but the first paragraph with <p>...</p>

For a list with items of more than one paragraph long, adding a blank line between items may be necessary to avoid confusion.

Continuing a list item after a sub-item

In HTML, a list item may contain several sublists, not necessarily adjacent; thus there may be parts of the list item not only before the first sublist, but also between sublists, and after the last one; however, in wiki-syntax, sublists follow the same rules as sections of a page: the only possible part of the list item not in sublists is before the first sublist.

In the case of an unnumbered first-level list in wikitext code this limitation can be overcome by splitting the list into multiple lists; indented text between the partial lists may visually serve as part of a list item after a sublist; however, this may give, depending on CSS, a blank line before and after each list, in which case, for uniformity, every first-level list item could be made a separate list.

Numbered lists illustrate that what should look like one list may, for the software, consist of multiple lists; unnumbered lists give a corresponding result, except that the problem of restarting with 1 is not applicable.

<ol>
  <li>list item A1
    <ol>
      <li>list item B1</li>
      <li>list item B2</li>
    </ol>continuing list item A1
  </li>
  <li>list item A2</li>
</ol>

list item A1
1. list item B1
2. list item B2
continuing list item A1
list item A2

vs.

#list item A1
##list item B1
##list item B2
#:continuing list item A1
#list item A2

list item A1
1. list item B1
2. list item B2
continuing list item A1
list item A2

One level deeper, with a sublist item continuing after a sub-sublist, one gets even more blank lines; however, the continuation of the first-level list is not affected:

#list item A1
##list item B1
###list item C1
##:continuing list item B1
##list item B2
#list item A2

gives

list item A1
1. list item B1
  1. list item C1
  continuing list item B1
2. list item B2
list item A2

Changing the list type

The list type (which type of marker appears before the list item) can be changed in CSS by setting the list-style-type property:

wikitext	rendering
<ol style="list-style-type:lower-roman"> <li>About the author</li> <li>Foreword to the first edition</li> <li>Foreword to the second edition</li> </ol>	About the author Foreword to the first edition Foreword to the second edition

Specifying a starting value

Specifying a starting value is possible with HTML syntax. (W3C has deprecated the start and value attributes as used below in HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0. But as of 2007, no popular web browsers implement CSS counters, which were to replace these attributes. Wikimedia projects use XHTML Transitional, which contains the deprecated attributes.)

<ol start="9">
<li>Amsterdam</li>
<li>Rotterdam</li>
<li>The Hague</li>
</ol>

Amsterdam
Rotterdam
The Hague

Or:

<ol>
<li value="9">Amsterdam</li>
<li value="8">Rotterdam</li>
<li value="7">The Hague</li>
</ol>

Amsterdam
Rotterdam
The Hague

Comparison with a table

Apart from providing automatic numbering, the numbered list also aligns the contents of the items, comparable with using table syntax:

{|
|-
| align=right |  9.||Amsterdam
|-
| align=right | 10.||Rotterdam
|-
| align=right | 11.||The Hague
|}

gives

9.	Amsterdam
10.	Rotterdam
11.	The Hague

This non-automatic numbering has the advantage that if a text refers to the numbers, insertion or deletion of an item does not disturb the correspondence.

Tables

A one-column table is very similar to a list, but it allows sorting. If the wikitext itself is already sorted with the same sortkey, this advantage does not apply. A multiple-column table allows sorting on any column.

Changing unordered lists to ordered ones

With the CSS

ul { list-style: decimal }

unordered lists are changed to ordered ones. This applies (as far as the CSS selector does not restrict this) to all ul-lists in the HTML source code:

those produced with *
those with <ul> in the wikitext
those produced by the system