Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists
 | This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell:
|
| Manual of Style (MoS) |
|---|
Lists are commonly used in Wikipedia to organize information. Lists may be found within the body of a prose article, in appendices such as a "Publications" or "Works" section, or as a stand-alone article. This guideline explains when and how to use lists appropriately.
Types of lists
Wikipedia differentiates between articles that consist primarily of lists (generally called "lists" or "stand alone lists") and articles that consist primarily of prose (called "articles"). Articles are intended to consist primarily of prose, though they may contain some lists.
Stand-alone list articles
List articles are encyclopedia pages consisting of introductory material in the lead section followed by a list, possibly arranged in sub-sections. The items on these lists might include links to specific articles or other information, and must be supported with references like any article. The titles of stand-alone lists typically begin with the type of list it is (List of, Index of, etc.), followed by the article's subject, e.g., List of vegetable oils. They can be organised alphabetically, by subject classification or by topics in a flat or hierarchical structure.
The title and bullet style, or vertical style, is common for stand-alone lists. These Wikipedia articles follow the Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists style guideline.
Embedded lists
Embedded lists are
Embedded lists should be used only when appropriate; sometimes the information in a list is better presented as prose. Presenting too much statistical data in list format may contravene
"Children" (i.e., indentation)
It can be appropriate to use a list style when the items in a list are "children" of the paragraphs that precede them. Such "children" logically qualify for indentation beneath their parent description. In this case, indenting the paragraphs in list form may make them easier to read, especially if the paragraphs are very short. The following example works both with and without the bullets:
| Prose | List |
|---|---|
| At the beginning of the 20th century, Carrere and Hastings . As better construction and engineering technology became available as the century progressed, New York became the focal point of the competition for the tallest building in the world.
The city's skyline has been composed of numerous and varied skyscrapers, many of which are icons of 20th-century architecture. The art deco masterpiece with an exterior crafted of brick, the Chrysler Building continues to be a favorite of New Yorkers to this day.
|
At the beginning of the 20th century, Carrere and Hastings . As better construction and engineering technology became available as the century progressed, New York became the focal point of the competition for the tallest building in the world. The city's striking skyline has been composed of numerous and varied skyscrapers, many of which are icons of 20th-century architecture:
|
Lists of works and timelines
Lists of works of individuals or groups, such as bibliographies, discographies, filmographies, album personnel and track listings are typically presented in simple list format, though it is expected that the information will be supported elsewhere in the article by prose analysis of the main points, and that if the lists become unwieldy, they are split off into stand-alone lists per
"See also" lists and "Related topics" lists are valuable navigational tools that assist users in finding related Wikipedia articles. When deciding what articles and lists of articles to append to any given entry, it is useful to try to put yourself inside the mind of readers: Ask yourself where would a reader likely want to go after reading the article. Typically this will include three types of links:
- Links to related topics – topics similar to that discussed in the article.
- Higher order (i.e., more general) articles and lists – this might include list of Indians and list of poets.
- Lower order (i.e., more specific) articles and lists – for example, the list of accounting topics, etc.
There is some controversy over how many links to articles and links to lists that should be put in any article. Some people separate the "links to articles" (put in the "See also" section) from the "links to lists" (put in the "Related topics" section), but this is not necessary unless there are too many links for one section alone. Some feel the optimum number of links to lists that should be included at the end of any given article is zero, one, or two. Others feel that a more comprehensive set of lists would be useful. In general, when deciding what list to include, the same criteria used to decide what articles to include in the See also section should be used. Editors should try to put themselves in the readers' frame of mind and ask "Where will I likely want to go after reading this article?". As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body.
References and external links
Reference lists show information sources outside of Wikipedia. The two most common types are:
- "Web hyperlinks" – lists of links to web addresses other than Wikipedia, under the heading "External links"
- "References" – lists of academic journal articles or books, under the heading "References"
Wikipedia is not a link collection and articles with only external links are
Special names of lists
Most lists on Wikipedia are item lists, but not all. Specialized types of lists include:
- Outlines – a Wikipedia outline is a hierarchically arranged list of topics belonging to a given subject. Outlines are one of the two types of general topics list on Wikipedia, the other being indices.
- Indices – an index on Wikipedia is an alphabetical list of articles on a given subject. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Indexes.
- Timelines – a timeline is a graphical representation of a chronological sequence of events.
- command structure.
- discographies. Bibliographies are a list of relevant references for a subject area, including books, journal articles, and web articles; discographies are a listing of all recordings on which a musician or singer features, or may be compiled based on genre or record label
- Glossaries – a glossary is a list of terms in a specific subject area, with definitions included.
- Set index articles – document a set of items that share the same (or a similar) name. They are different from disambiguation pages in that they are full-fledged articles meant to document multiple subjects, while disambiguation pages are for navigation purposes only. Not all set index articles are lists.
- notableexamples from a given category), or may require constant updates to remain current.
Purposes of lists
Lists have three main purposes:
Information
The list may be a valuable information source. This is particularly the case for a structured list. Examples would include lists organized chronologically, grouped by theme, or annotated lists.
Lists which contain internally linked terms (i.e.,
Users with a specific research goal, described in one or two words, are likely to find Wikipedia's search box useful.
Development
Some lists are useful for Wikipedia development purposes. The lists of related topics give an indication of the state of Wikipedia, the articles that have been written, and the articles that have yet to be written. However, as Wikipedia is optimized for readers over editors, any lists which exist primarily for development or maintenance purposes (such as a list that consists entirely of
Lists and categories
Redundancy of lists and categories is beneficial because the two formats work together; the principle is covered in the guideline Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. Like categories, lists can be used for keeping track of changes in the listed pages, using the Related Changes feature. Unlike a category, a list also allows keeping a history of its contents; lists also permit a large number of entries to appear on a single page.
List naming
For a
Sorting a list
Lists may be sorted alphabetically (e.g. for people: by surname, given name, initials), chronologically (by date, usually oldest first), or occasionally by other criteria. To suggest that a list in an article or section should be sorted, use {{Unsorted list}}.
List layout
Use prose where understood easily
Prefer prose where a passage is understood easily as regular text that appears in its ordinary form, without metrical structure or line breaks. Prose is preferred in articles because it allows the presentation of detail and clarification of context in a way that a simple list may not. It is best suited to articles because their purpose is to explain.
{{prose}} can be used to indicate a list which may be better-written as prose. Many stub articles can be improved by converting unnecessary lists into encyclopedic prose.
| Prose | List with no content |
|---|---|
| The 20th-century architecture of New York City includes numerous icons of architecture, most notably its striking Madison Square; Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building (1913), a neo-Gothic "Cathedral of Commerce" overlooking City Hall; the Chrysler Building (1929), a pure expression of Art Deco; and the Empire State Building (1931). Modernist architect Raymond Hood, and Lever House after World War II, began the clusters of "glass boxes" that transformed the classic skyline of the 1930s, culminating in the World Trade Center towers (1973).
|
20th-century architecture of New York City
|
Use good markup
Use proper markup: Employ careful wiki markup- or template-based list code . Especially do not leave blank lines between items in a list, since this causes the MediaWiki software to misinterpret each item as beginning a new list. (There are HTML techniques to insert linebreaks or additional paragraphs into a list item.) Avoid misuse of list markup in articles for visual styling of non-list material.
Images and lists
| A (good) | [[File:Example.jpg|thumb|Caption text]]
* Example 1
* Example 2
* Example 3
* Example 4
|
|---|---|
| B (bad) | * Example 1
* Example 2
[[File:Example.jpg|thumb|Caption text]]
* Example 3
* Example 4
|
| C (good) | * Example 1
* Example 2
* [[File:Example.jpg|thumb|Caption text]] Example 3
* Example 4
|
To float pictures to the right of the list, one should put the image markup before the first item in most cases, see the example "A". Inserting the image markup as a separate line within the list (as in example "B") once again will split it into two half-lists.
Should the length of the list items or the topical relevance of said image discourage display at the top corner, consider placing it after the asterisk of the first list-item it illustrates (as in example "C") to avoid breaking continuity of the unordered list (<ul>) element.
Note: When floating images to the left of a list, use the {{flowlist}} template to prevent disrupting the indentation of the bullet-points.
Use an unordered list by default
Use a bulleted (unordered) list by default, especially for long lists. Use a numbered (ordered) list only if there is a need to refer to items by number, the sequence of items is important, or the numbering exists in the real world (e.g., tracks on an album).
Format list items consistently
List items should be formatted consistently in a list. Unless there is a good reason to use different list types in the same page, consistency throughout an article is also desirable.
Use
Lowercase is best reserved for:
- lists introduced by a sentence fragment, with a short list of items, also fragments, continuing the extended sentence;
- glossary entries, where it is important to convey whether something is usually capitalized or not;
- lists of items with non-English names (that have not been assimilated into English), from a language in which their capitalization would be incorrect.
Use the same grammatical form for all items in a list – avoid mixing sentences and sentence fragments as items.
- When the items are complete sentences, each one is formatted with sentence case (i.e., the initial letter is capitalized) and a final full stop(period).
- When the items are sentence fragments, the list is usually preceded by introductory material and a colon. Items may be given with initial lowercase or in sentence case. No final punctuation is used in most cases.
- Semicolons may be used when the list is short, items are lowercase, and the entire list forms a complete sentence (typically with its introductory phrase and possibly with a closing phrase after the list to complete the sentence). Many cases of this are better rewritten as paragraphs unless it is contextually important to "listify" the items for clarity (e.g., because they correspond to sections in the rest of the article below the list).
A list item should not end with a full stop unless it consists of a complete sentence or is the end of a list that forms one.
When elements contain (or are) titles of works or other proper names, these retain their original capitalization, regardless how the rest of the list is formatted.
A list title in a section heading provides a direct edit point, if one enables
Introductory material
Lists should have introductory material; for stand-alone lists, this should be the
Exercise caution when
Some information, such as "Notable people" or "Alumni", which may be read for context or scanned for content, may be formatted with a section lead and a descriptive, bulleted list, or as prose, depending on size. If the list is long, is unable to be summarised, but is not appropriate for splitting out, then a section lead, with a descriptive, bulleted list may be more appropriate than a long prose section.
Organization
Although lists may be organized in different ways, they must always be organized. The most basic form of organization is
Lists should never contain "Unsorted" or "Miscellaneous" headings, as all items worthy of inclusion in the list can be sorted by some criteria, although it is entirely possible that the formatting of the list would need to be revamped to include all appropriate items. Not-yet-sorted items may be included on the list's talk page while their categorization is determined.
List size
Keep lists and tables as short as feasible for their purpose and scope: material within a list should relate to the article topic without going into unnecessary detail; and statistical data kept to a minimum per
Some material may
In some cases, a list style may be preferable to a long sequence within a sentence, compare:
| Prose | List | ||
|---|---|---|---|
definition by genus and difference .
|
Philosophers discuss the meaning, function, and possibility of offering definitions. It is typical (e.g., in university logic texts) to distinguish a number of different kinds and techniques of definition, including:
|
Adding individual items to a list
Lists, whether they are
It is important to
Besides being useful for such feedback, a talk page discussion is also a good review process for reaching consensus before adding an item that is difficult or contentious, especially those items for which the definition of the topic itself is disputed. Note that, as with other policies and processes mentioned in this section, this process can be used for any type of difficult or contentious encyclopedic content on Wikipedia.
Reaching consensus on the talk page before editing the list itself not only saves time in the long run, but also helps make sure that each item on the list is
When an item meets the requirements of the Verifiability policy, readers of the list can check an item's reference to see that the information comes from a reliable source. For information to be verifiable, it also means that Wikipedia does not publish original research: its content is determined by information previously published in a good source, rather than the beliefs or experiences of its editors, or even the editor's interpretation beyond what the source actually says. Even if you're sure that an item is relevant to the list's topic, you must find a good source that verifies this knowledge before you add it to the list (although you can suggest it on the talk page), and add that source in a reference next to the item.
In lists that involve living persons, the
When reliable sources disagree, the policy of keeping a
When adding to a stand-alone list with
Categories
You can add one or more suitable subcategories of Category:Lists at the bottom of the page containing a list that may be of independent encyclopedic interest. If there is a redirect for the list (e.g., from "List of Presidents of Elbonia" to "President of Elbonia#List of Elbonian Presidents") put list categories on the "List"-named redirect instead. Use a sort key to sort alphabetically by topic.
List styles
There are several ways of presenting lists on Wikipedia.
Bulleted lists
This is the most common list type on Wikipedia. Bullets are used to discern, at a glance, the individual items in a list, usually when each item in the list is a simple word, phrase or single line of text, for which numeric ordering is not appropriate, or lists that are extremely brief, where discerning the items at a glance is not an issue. They are not appropriate for large paragraphs. Simple bulleted lists are created by starting a line with * and adding the text of a list item, one item per * line.
List items should be formatted consistently. Summary:
- Prefer sentence case.
- Prefer using full sentences, and avoid mixing sentences and fragments as items in the same list.
- No terminal punctuation is used with sentence fragments.
- Do not put blank lines between list items.
.
| Wikitext | HTML | Appearance |
|---|---|---|
== Title of list ==
* Example 1
* Example 2
* Example 3
|
<h2><span class="mw-headline" id="Title_of_list">Title of list</span></h2>
<ul>
<li>Example 1</li>
<li>Example 2</li>
<li>Example 3</li>
</ul>
|
|
For infoboxes, a bulleted list can be converted to unbulleted or horizontal style with simple templates, to suppress both the large bullets and the indentation.
Do not double-space the lines of the list by leaving blank lines after them. Doing this breaks the list into multiple lists, defeating the purpose of using list markup. This adversely affects accessibility (screen readers will tell the visually impaired user there are multiple lists),[1] and interferes with machine-parseability of the content for reuse. Moreover, in certain Web browsers, the extra white-space between one block of list output and the next can have a visually jarring effect.
Blank lines between items of a numbered list will not only cause the same broken-list problems as in bulleted lists, but will also restart the numbering at "1". This cannot be fixed without complex markup (defeating ease-of-editing expectations), so double-spacing should always be avoided in numbered lists.
| Wikitext | HTML | Appearance |
|---|---|---|
== Title of list ==
* Example 1
* Example 2
* Example 3
|
<h2><span class="mw-headline" id="Title_of_list">Title of list</span></h2>
<ul>
<li>Example 1</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Example 2</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Example 3</li>
</ul>
|
|
Doing this actually produces three lists with one item each! Notice the rendered HTML in which there are as many <ul> tags as <li> tags.
Unbulleted lists
For lists of up to 30 items (may increase later) without bullets, use a {{Plainlist}} or {{Unbulleted list}} template. Typical uses are in infobox fields, and to replace pseudo-lists of lines separated with <br />. The templates emit the correct HTML markup, and hide the bullets with CSS .
| Wikitext | HTML | Appearance |
|---|---|---|
== Title of list ==
{{Plainlist|
* Example 1
* Example 2
* Example 3
}}
|
<h2><span class="mw-headline" id="Title_of_list">Title of list</span></h2>
<div class="plainlist">
<ul>
<li>Example 1</li>
<li>Example 2</li>
<li>Example 3</li>
</ul>
</div>
|
|
== Title of list ==
{{Unbulleted list
| Example 1
| Example 2
| Example 3
}}
|
<h2><span class="mw-headline" id="Title_of_list">Title of list</span></h2>
<div class="plainlist">
<ul>
<li>Example 1</li>
<li>Example 2</li>
<li>Example 3</li>
</ul>
</div>
|
|
A benefit of {{Plainlist}} is that it can be wrapped around an already-existing bullet list. A feature of {{Unbulleted list}} is that, for a short list, it can be put on a single line: {{Unbulleted list|Example 1|Example 2|Example 3}}.
Numbered lists
Use a numbered (ordered) list only if any of the following apply:
- There is a need to refer to the elements by number.
- The sequence of the items is critical.
- The numbering has some independent meaning, for example in a listing of musical tracks on an album.
Use a # symbol at the start of a line to generate a numbered list item (excepted as detailed in this section, this works the same as * for bulleted lists, above).
List items should be formatted consistently. Summary:
- Prefer sentence case.
- Prefer using full sentences, and avoid mixing sentences and fragments as items in the same list.
- No terminal punctuation is used with sentence fragments.
- Do not put blank lines between list items.
.
Example:
| Wikitext | HTML | Appearance |
|---|---|---|
== Title of list == # Example 1 # Example 2 # Example 3 |
<h2><span class="mw-headline" id="Title_of_list">Title of list</span></h2>
<ol>
<li>Example 1</li>
<li>Example 2</li>
<li>Example 3</li>
</ol>
|
|
Blank lines between items of an ordered list will not only cause the same broken-list problems as in bulleted lists, but will also restart the numbering at "1". This cannot be fixed without complex markup (defeating ease-of-editing expectations), so double-spacing should always be avoided in numbered lists.
Other cases
Experienced editors can use raw HTML to achieve more complex results, such as ordered lists using indexes other than numbers, and ordered lists not starting from 1.
| Wikitext | Appearance |
|---|---|
<ol type="a">
<li>this</li>
<li>list</li>
<li>uses</li>
<li>letters</li>
<li>as</li>
<li>indexes</li>
</ol>
|
|
<ol start="10">
<li>this</li>
<li>list</li>
<li>starts</li>
<li>from</li>
<li>10</li>
</ol>
|
|
<ol type="I" start="50">
<li>this</li>
<li>list</li>
<li>uses</li>
<li>roman</li>
<li>numerals</li>
<li>and</li>
<li>starts</li>
<li>from</li>
<li>50</li>
</ol>
|
|
Valid values for the list type are:
- 1 (default, numbers)
- a (lowercase latin letters)
- A (uppercase latin letters)
- i (lowercase roman numerals)
- I (uppercase roman numerals)
The start value can be negative, but only if the list uses numbers as indexes. Otherwise, bizarre results are achieved.
| Wikitext | Appearance |
|---|---|
<ol type="a" start="-2">
<li>definitely</li>
<li><b>not</b></li>
<li>a</li>
<li>good</li>
<li>idea!</li>
</ol>
|
|
Description (definition, association) lists
A description list contains groups of "... terms and definitions, metadata topics and values, questions and answers, or any other groups of name-value data."[2][3] On Wikipedia, the most common use of a description list is for a glossary, where it is preferable to other styles. Wikipedia has special markup for description lists:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
; name 1 : value 1 ; name 2 : value 2 ; name 3 : value 3 |
|
The source can also be laid out with the descriptive value on the next line after the term, like so:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
|
|
This still keeps the names and values within a single description list, and the alternation of typically short names and longer values makes the separate components easy to spot while editing. The resulting layout and HTML are identical to that generated by the single-line syntax.
Either wikitext markup is functionality-limited and easily broken. A major weakness of both variants of wikitext markup is that they are easily broken by later editors attempting to create multi-line values. These issues are most-prominent in lengthy description lists. As such, there are templates for producing description lists such as glossaries, in ways that provide for richer, more complex content, including multiple paragraphs, block quotations, sub-lists, etc. .
The basic format of a template-structured description list is:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
|
|
|
Use either wikitext or templates as above for description lists instead of other, made-up formats, as other formats may be unexpected for reader and editor alike, hamper reusability of Wikipedia content, make automated processing more difficult, and introduce usability and accessibility problems. (Other formats may take less vertical space, but will be more difficult for the reader to scan.) That said, a list of items whose descriptions contain more than one paragraph may present better as sections in a stand-alone list article, while tables are better-suited to associating content than description lists, especially when there are multiple values for each item.
As with unordered (bulleted) and ordered (numbered) lists, items in description lists should not have blank lines between them, as it causes each entry to be its own bogus "list" in the output, obviating the point of putting the entries in list markup to begin with.
When wiki markup colons are used just for visual
{{in5}} or one of its variants for one line, and {{block indentMany of the considerations at
| Prose | List |
|---|---|
injuries and normal health situations, such as pregnancy , that might affect a person's health, benefit from medical assistance, or have implications for medical treatments.
|
|
Tables
Tables are a way of presenting links, data, or information in rows and columns. They are a complex form of list and are useful especially when more than 2 pieces of information are of interest to each list item. Tables require a more-complex notation, and should be scrutinized for their accessibility. Consideration may be given to
Tables might be used for presenting mathematical data such as multiplication tables, comparative figures, or sporting results. They might also be used for presenting equivalent words in two or more languages, for awards by type and year, and complex discographies.
Horizontal lists
In situations such as infoboxes, horizontal lists may be useful. Examples:
| Approach | Output | Code |
|---|---|---|
| List with commas | Entry 1, entry 2, entry 3 | Just plain text |
| List with {{Hlist}} |
|
{{hlist|Entry 1|entry 2|entry 3}}
|
| List with {{Flatlist}} |
|
|
Note the capitalization of only the first word in this list ("Entry 1 ..."), regardless of coding style. Words that are normally capitalized, like proper names, would of course still be capitalized.
A benefit of {{Flatlist}} is that it can be wrapped around an already-existing bullet list. A feature of {{Hlist}} is that, for a short list, it can be put on a single line.
Timelines
For lists of dated events, or timelines, use one instance of {{Timeline-event}} per event, thus:
* {{Timeline-event|date={{Start date|1904|11|18|df=y}}|event=A thing happened}}
* {{Timeline-event|date={{Start date|1905}}|event=Not much happened}}
* {{Timeline-event|date={{Start date|1906|01|21}}|event=Something else happened}}
to render as:
- 18 November 1904: A thing happened
- 1905: Not much happened
- January 21, 1906: Something else happened
(note optional df=y (date first) parameter – date formatting should be consistent within individual articles).
Chronological lists, such as timelines, should be in earliest-to-latest chronological order. See Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists § Chronological ordering.
Line breaks
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
cake<br /> cheese<br /> chocolate<br /> |
cake |
This "pseudo-list" method is
Boilerplate text
Directly before an incomplete list, insert {{
 | This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. |
Several topic-specific variations of this template are also available within Category:Incomplete list maintenance templates. Only one of {{incomplete list}} or its variations should be added, unless the topic is significantly related to more than one of the subcategories. Do not add both {{incomplete list}} AND a variation to any list.
Pro and con lists
These are lists of arguments for and against a particular contention or position. They include lists of Advantages and disadvantages of a technology or proposal (such as
Either method needs careful judgment as to whether and how it should be used. In particular, pro and con lists can fragment the presentation of facts, create a binary structure where a more nuanced treatment of the spectrum of facts is preferable, encourage oversimplification, and require readers to jump back and forth between the two sides of the list.
See also
- Help:Line-break handling – covers among other things how to properly handle the line wrapping in horizontal link lists
- Help:Sorting– tables on Wikipedia can be made sortable with
class="sortable", this page explains how - Wikipedia:List dos and don'ts – information page summarizing the key points in this guideline
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages – disambiguation pages are lists of homographs—a word or a group of words that share the same written form but have different meanings—with their own page rules and layouts
- Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists – guideline page on content and style guidelines and naming conventions
- Wikipedia:Template index/Cleanup § Lists – cleanup tags for lists
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists – project's goal is to collaboratively develop Wikipedia's list articles and embedded lists
Notes
- ^ Blank lines cause particular problems for users of screen readers. The badly formatted example above is read out loud like this: "List of 1 items: Example 1, list end. List of 1 items: Example 2, list end. List of 1 items: Example 3, list end." Improper formatting can more than triple the length of time it takes to read the list.
- ^ HTML5: A Vocabulary and Associated APIs for HTML and XHTML – W3C Recommendation, World Wide Web Consortium, 28 October 2014, 4.4.8 The dl element.
- HTML4 and an association list in early HTML5.