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This page deals with creating lists in MediaWiki.

MediaWiki offers three types of lists: unordered lists, ordered lists and definition lists.

Unordered lists

Each item is on a new line starting with an asterisk * e.g. * item.

Ordered lists

Each item is on a new line starting with a hash # e.g. # item.

Definition lists

Each item has two parts: the term and the description

The term is on a new line starting with a semicolon ; e.g. ; term.

The description follows on the same line after a colon : e.g.; term : description,

or the description starts its own line with a colon : e.g. : description (there can be several descriptions per term, each one starting with a colon on a new line).

In the following table you will find some examples for both methods:

* 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.

# Numbered lists are good
## very organized
## easy to follow

* You can also
** break lines<br>inside lists<br>like this

; Definition lists
; term : definition
; semicolon plus term
: colon plus definition

; Mixed definition lists
; item 1 : definition
:; sub-item 1 plus term
:: two colons plus definition
:; sub-item 2 : colon plus definition
; item 2 
: back to the main list

* Or create mixed lists
*# and nest them
*#* like this
*#*; definitions
*#*: work:
*#*; apple
*#*; banana
*#*: fruits

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. If you want to put more than one line of text, add two line break symbols, <br /><br />, and you will get the desired effect. Wrapping text in ‎<p>…‎</p> will render that text in a new paragraph, which will start on its own line when rendered.

MediaWiki does not support continuing a list item after a sub-list, unless the whole list is marked up with HTML.

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 is semantically different
• This may display (depending on CSS) unwanted vertical space between each list (in which case, for uniformity, every first-level list item could be made a separate list)
• This causes numbering to restart from 1 in numbered lists.

<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
## list item B1
## 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

See also m:Template:List demo.

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

<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>

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

The standard #, ##, ### wikitext can be used alongside CSS in MediaWiki:Common.css to produce the usual system of numbered lists (1, 2, 3; then a, b, c; then i, ii, iii):

ol { 
	list-style-type: decimal; 
}
ol li > ol { 
	list-style-type: lower-alpha; 
}
ol li > ol li > ol { 
	list-style-type: lower-roman; 
}

The first ol above is the default, so not necessary unless some other list-style-type is required.

#list item A1
##list item B1
###list item C1
###list item C2
##list item B2
#list item A2

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 colons: for each colon). This can be done with CSS:

ol { margin-left: 2cm}

or alternatively, like below.

:#abc
:#def
:#ghi
 

<ul>
  <ol>
    <li>abc</li>
    <li>def</li>
    <li>ghi</li>
  </ol>
</ul>

<ul>
#abc
#def
#ghi
</ul>

Specifying a starting value is possible with HTML syntax.

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

Or:

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

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:

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.

See also Template:Col-begin, Template:Col-break, Template:Col-end.

<div style="column-count:2">
* apple
* carpet
* geography
* mountain
* nowhere
* postage
* ragged
* toast
</div>

gives:

<div style="column-count:3">
* apple
* carpet
* geography
* mountain
* nowhere
* postage
* ragged
* toast
</div>

gives:

<div style="column-count:3">
# apple
# carpet
# geography
# mountain
# nowhere
# postage
# ragged
# toast
</div>

gives:

Below a starting value is specified, with HTML-syntax (for the first column either wiki-syntax or HTML-syntax can be used).

In combination with the extra indentation explained in the previous section:

{| valign="top"
|-
|<ul><ol start="125"><li>a</li><li>bb</li><li>ccc</li></ol></ul>
|<ul><ol start="128"><li>ddd</li><li>ee</li><li>f</li></ol></ul>
|}

gives

Using m:Template:multi-column numbered list the computation of the starting values can be automated, and only the first starting value and the number of items in each column except the last has to be specified. Adding an item to, or removing an item from a column requires adjusting only one number, the number of items in that column, instead of changing the starting numbers for all subsequent columns.

{{Multi-column numbered list|125|a<li>bb<li>ccc|3|<li>ddd<li>ee<li>f}}

gives:

{{Multi-column numbered list|lst=lower-alpha|125|a<li>bb<li>ccc|3|<li>ddd<li>ee|2|<li>f}}

gives:

{{Multi-column numbered list|lst=lower-roman|125|a<li>bb<li>ccc|3|<li>ddd<li>ee|2|<li>f}}

gives:

{{Multi-column numbered list|lst=disc||a<li>bb<li>ccc||<li>ddd<li>ee||<li>f}}

gives:

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.

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.

See also When to use tables.

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. See also User contributions and What links here.

However, it does not seem possible to make all page history lists ordered (unless one makes all lists ordered), because the class name is based on the page for which the history is viewed.

• Wikipedia help page about lists
• Module:Sort definition list – A Scribunto module that allows to sort definition lists by the term defined, useful on multilingual wikis.

• List
• Help