Bullets, Numbers and Terms

Apart from headings and paragraphs another very common structure in a document is a list. Numbered and bulleted lists are familiar objects, but not everyone will think a term as another indicator an item in a list. HTML calls the third type a definition list, and then it may make more sense. You will often encounter circumstances where something needs explaining or expanding.

Unordered Lists

Usually referred to as bulleted lists they are used where the order of items is not important, such as a holiday packing list. The list is defined with [ul] tags and each item with [li] tags. Here we see the structure of a list containing two sub-lists.

Currently, this site's only unordered list is within a box-out and the site's styling code only provides a minor spacing adjustment to the default for unordered lists that appear in a box-out. Unordered lists elsewhere will adopt a browser's default styling for such lists.

Definition Lists

This is used to hold a set of terms" followed by their "definitions". Typically, the terms are displayed in a bigger bolder font than the definitions which are indented. The structure uses the following tags:

This site uses this structure on the home page where it lists the various components of my Mastodon account header image and styling exists in the GregCustom theme to produce the result seen there. There's also an example within a box-out, with slightly different sizing.

Ordered Lists

As the name suggests, this type of list is used where order is important, such as describing the steps in a process to be executed. The GregCuston theme does not include code to vary from the default layout and numbering system that any browser will apply.

If you want to construct an ordered list that contains a sub-list in the general format below then getting the numbering you desire may present a problem.

It would be a good idea to check out a site like W3Schools.com where there's a good Introduction to the topic.