Episode 11 of 17

HTML Lists

Learn how to create ordered lists, unordered lists, and description lists in HTML.

HTML Lists

Lists are used to group related items together. HTML provides three types of lists.

1. Unordered Lists (<ul>)

Unordered lists display items with bullet points:

<ul>
    <li>HTML</li>
    <li>CSS</li>
    <li>JavaScript</li>
</ul>

This renders as:

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript

2. Ordered Lists (<ol>)

Ordered lists display items with numbers:

<ol>
    <li>Open your text editor</li>
    <li>Create a new file</li>
    <li>Write your HTML</li>
    <li>Save and open in browser</li>
</ol>

Ordered List Attributes

AttributePurposeExample
typeNumber styletype="A" (A, B, C), type="i" (i, ii, iii)
startStarting numberstart="5" (starts from 5)
reversedCount backwards<ol reversed> (3, 2, 1)

3. Description Lists (<dl>)

Description lists define terms and their descriptions:

<dl>
    <dt>HTML</dt>
    <dd>HyperText Markup Language — structures web content</dd>

    <dt>CSS</dt>
    <dd>Cascading Style Sheets — styles web content</dd>

    <dt>JavaScript</dt>
    <dd>A programming language — adds interactivity</dd>
</dl>

Nested Lists

You can place a list inside a list item to create sub-lists:

<ul>
    <li>Front-end
        <ul>
            <li>HTML</li>
            <li>CSS</li>
            <li>JavaScript</li>
        </ul>
    </li>
    <li>Back-end
        <ul>
            <li>Node.js</li>
            <li>Python</li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

Key Takeaways

  • Use <ul> for unordered (bulleted) lists
  • Use <ol> for ordered (numbered) lists
  • Use <dl> for definition/description lists
  • Each list item is wrapped in a <li> tag
  • Lists can be nested inside each other