Help:Lists

List basics
There are three main 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.

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 noticable effects.

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

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.

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: gives
 * 1) list item A1
 * 2) list item B1
 * 3) list item C1
 * continuing list item B1
 * 1) list item B2
 * 2) list item A2
 * 1) list item A1
 * 2) list item B1
 * 3) list item C1
 * continuing list item B1
 * 1) list item B2
 * 2) list item A2

Extra indentation of lists
In a numbered list in a large font, some browsers do not show more than two digits, unless extra indentation is applied (if there are multiple columns: for each column). This can be done with CSS: ol { margin-left: 2cm} or alternatively, like below.

Specifying a starting value
Specifying a starting value is only possible with HTML syntax. (W3C has deprecated the  and   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.)

Amsterdam Rotterdam The Hague  gives Amsterdam Rotterdam The Hague 

Or:  Amsterdam Rotterdam</li> The Hague</li> </ol> gives  Amsterdam</li> Rotterdam</li> The Hague</li> </ol>

Multi-column lists
columns-list can be used to give lists multiple columns.

• 2

• 2

• 4

• 4

Streamlined style or horizontal style
It is also possible to present short lists using very basic formatting, such as:

Title of list: example 1, example 2, example 3

Title of list: example 1, example 2, example 3

This style requires less space on the page, and is preferred if there are only a few entries in the list, it can be read easily, and a direct edit point is not required. The list items should start with a lowercase letter unless they are proper nouns.

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

Since each special page, like other pages, has a class based on the pagename, one can separately specify for each type whether the lists should be ordered. Some of the lists created by the system have special ids, e.g. with the CSS history lists will be ordered.
 * 1) pagehistory { list-style: decimal; }