HTML Lists: How to Create Bulleted and Numbered Lists

HTML lists are used to display related information in an easy-to-read and concise way as lists.

Three types of HTML lists

We can use three types of lists to represent different types of data in HTML:

  1. Unordered List <ul>
  2. Ordered List <ol>
  3. Description List <dl>

Unordered List

The unordered list is used to represent data in a list for which the order of items does not matter.

In HTML, we use the <ul> tag to create unordered lists. Each item of the list must be a <li> tag which represents list items. For example,

<ul>
  <li>Apple</li>
  <li>Orange</li>
  <li>Mango</li>
</ul>

Browser Output

An HTML unordered list example

Here, <li>Apple</li>, <li>Orange</li>, and <li>Mango</li> are the list items.


Ordered List

The ordered list is used to represent data in a list for which the order of items has significance.

The <ol> tag is used to create ordered lists. Similar to unordered lists, each item in the ordered list must be a <li> tag. For example,

<ol>
  <li>Ready</li>
  <li>Set</li>
  <li>Go</li>
</ol>

Browser Output

An HTML ordered list example

Here, you can see list items are represented with numbers to represent a certain order.


Description List

The HTML description list is used to represent data in the name-value form. We use the <dl> tag to create a definition list and each item of the description list has two elements:

  • term/title - represented by the <dt> tag
  • description of the term - represented by the <dd> tag

Let's see an example,

<dl>
  <dt>HTML</dt>
  <dd>Hyper-Text Markup Language</dd>
  <dt>CSS</dt>
  <dd>Cascading StyleSheets</dd>
  <dt>JS</dt>
  <dd>Javascript</dd>
</dl>

Browser Output

An HTML description list example

Since the description list includes the definition of a term, it is also known as the definition list. To learn more about the description list, visit HTML Description List.


Tags used in HTML lists

TagExplanation
<ol>Defines an ordered list.
<ul>Defines an unordered list.
<dl>Defines a description list.
<li>Defines a list item in ordered or unordered lists.
<dt>Defines a term in description list.
<dd>Defines the description of a term in the description list.

#html 

HTML Lists: How to Create Bulleted and Numbered Lists
1.00 GEEK