Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists

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 Stand-alone lists style guideline.

Embedded lists
Embedded lists are lists used within articles that supplement the article's prose content. They are included in the text-proper or appended, and may be in table format. Wikipedia uses several standard appendices, usually in list format, as well as navigational templates.

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 policy.

"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:

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 WP:Summary style. Timelines and chronologies can be a useful supplement to prose descriptions of real-world histories. The content of a list is governed by the same content policies as prose, including principles of due weight and avoiding original research. Ensure that list items have the same importance to the subject as would be required for the item to be included in the text of the article, according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines (including WP:Trivia sections). Consider whether prose is more appropriate. Specific advice regarding timelines is given in Timeline standards.

Related topics (navigational lists)
"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 lists of people, list of countries, etc. For example, list of Indian language poets should link to both list of Indians and list of poets.
 * Lower order (i.e., more specific) articles and lists – for example, the Business page navigational list contains links to small business, 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 actively discouraged, but it is appropriate to reference more detailed material from the Internet. This is particularly the case when you have used a web site as an important source of information.

Special names of lists
Most lists on Wikipedia are item lists, but not all. Specialized types of lists include:
 * Outline – 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.
 * Index – an index on Wikipedia is an alphabetical list of articles on a given subject. See WikiProject Indexes.
 * Timeline – a timeline is a graphical representation of a chronological sequence of events.
 * Order of battle – a representation of armed force components that shows the hierarchical organization and command structure.
 * List of works include bibliographies and 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.
 * Glossary – a glossary is a list of terms in a specific subject area, with definitions included.
 * Set index article – 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.
 * Dynamic list – a dynamic list is any list that may never be fully complete (since it will only include notable examples 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.

Navigation
Lists which contain internally linked terms (i.e., wikilinks) serve, in aggregate, as natural tables of contents and indexes of Wikipedia. If users have some general idea of what they are looking for but do not know the specific terminology, they could browse the lists of basic topics and more comprehensive lists of topics, which in turn lead to most if not all of Wikipedia's lists, which in turn lead to related articles. Lists are also provided in portals to assist in navigating their subjects, and lists are often placed in articles via the use of series boxes and other navigation templates.

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 red links and does not serve an informational purpose; especially a list of missing topics) should be in either the project or user space, not the main space.

Lists and categories
Redundancy of lists and categories is beneficial because the two formats work together; the principle is covered in the guideline 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 stand-alone list, the list's title is the page name. For an embedded list, the list's title is usually a section title (for instance, ), but it can be shorter. The list title should not be misleading and should normally not include abbreviations. Additionally, an overly precise list title can be less useful and can make the list difficult to find; the precise inclusion criteria for the list should be spelled out in the lead section (see below), not the title. For instance, words like complete and notable are normally excluded from list titles. Instead, the lead makes clear whether the list is complete or whether it is limited to widely-known or notable members (i.e., those that merit articles). Note that the word "famous" is considered an unnecessary "peacock" embellishment and should not be used.

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.

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.

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
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 () 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 sentence case by default for list items, whether they are complete sentences or not. Sentence case is used for around 99% of lists on Wikipedia. Title case (as used for book titles) is not used for list entries.

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 section editing. It also enables the automatic table of contents to detect the list. It is not required, however, and should not be used for a list that is not the focus of a section, or for lists in an article that uses a lot of short lists and which is better arranged by more topical headings that group related lists.

Introductory material
Lists should have introductory material; for stand-alone lists, this should be the lead section. This introductory material should make clear the scope of the list. It should also provide explanation for non-obvious characteristics of the list, such as the list's structure. Stand-alone lists may place non-obvious characteristics in a separate introductory section (e.g. ). Lists and their supporting material must comply with standard Wikipedia content policies and guidelines, including Neutral point of view and should not create content forks.

Exercise caution when self-referencing Wikipedia, to ensure any self-reference is acceptable. For example, notability is often a criterion used for stand-alone lists (and sometimes embedded ones), but many other self-references create problems. To include a self-reference, format it with.

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 alphabetical or numerical (such as List of Star Wars starfighters), though if items have specific dates a chronological format is sometimes preferable (List of Belarusian Prime Ministers). When using a more complex form of organization, (by origin, by use, by type, etc.), the criteria for categorization must be clear and consistent. Just as a reader or editor could easily assume that the headings A, B, C would be followed by D (rather than 1903), more complex systems should be just as explicit. If a list of Australians in international prisons contains the headings Argentina and Cambodia (organization by country), it would be inappropriate for an editor to add the heading Drug trafficking (organization by offense). If a list entry logically belongs in two or more categories (e.g., an Australian in an Argentine prison for drug trafficking), this suggests that the list categorization might be flawed, and should be re-examined.

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 policy.

Some material may not be appropriate for reducing or summarizing using the summary style method. An embedded list may need to be split off entirely into a list article, leaving a See template which produces:

In some cases, a list style may be preferable to a long sequence within a sentence, compare:

Adding individual items to a list
Lists, whether they are stand-alone lists (also called list articles) or embedded lists, are encyclopedic content just as paragraph-only articles or sections are. Therefore, all individual items on the list must follow Wikipedia's content policies: the core content policies of Verifiability (through good sources in the item's one or more references), No original research, and Neutral point of view, plus the other content policies as well. Content should be sourced where it appears with inline citations if the content contains any of the four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations. Although the format of a list might require less detail per topic, Wikipedia policies and procedures apply equally to both a list of similar things as well as to any related article to which an individual thing on the list might be linked.

It is important to be bold in adding or editing items on a list, but also to balance boldness with being thoughtful, a balance which all content policies are aimed at helping editors achieve. Edits of uncertain quality can be first discussed on the talk page for feedback from other editors.

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 well referenced and that the list as a whole represents a neutral point of view. Content should be sourced where it appears, and provide inline citations if it contains any of the four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations.

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 Biographies of living persons policy applies.

When reliable sources disagree, the policy of keeping a neutral point of view requires that competing views be described without endorsing any in particular. Editors should simply present what the various sources say, giving each side its due weight through coverage balanced according to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published reliable sources.

When adding to a stand-alone list with links to other articles, follow the established format when adding your item, and then see if you can link that item to an article focusing on that item's topic. If so, then consider if the list's format allows room for all the details of competing views in the list item or if those details should only be covered in the linked, main article on the topic. Either way, make sure to add them to the main article if they are not already there.

Categories
You can add one or more suitable sub categories 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.

HTML formatting can be used to create rich lists, including items with internal paragraph breaks. Using images with lists requires some care.

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), 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.

Doing this actually produces three lists with one item each! Notice the rendered HTML in which there are as many tags as  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. The templates emit the correct HTML markup, and hide the bullets with CSS.

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:.

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: 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.

HTML formatting can be used to create rich lists, including items with internal paragraph breaks; some basics are illustrated below. Using images with lists also requires some care.

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. Valid values for the list type are: The start value can be negative, but only if the list uses numbers as indexes. Otherwise, bizarre results are achieved.
 * 1 (default, numbers)
 * a (lowercase latin letters)
 * A (uppercase latin letters)
 * i (lowercase roman numerals)
 * I (uppercase roman numerals)

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." 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 :

The source can also be laid out with the descriptive value on the next line after the term, like so:

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  is:

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 indentation, they too are rendered in HTML as description lists, but without ; -delimited terms to which the : -indented material applies, nor with the list start and end tags, which produces broken markup (see for details). More accessible indentation templates can be used, e.g., or one of its variants for one line, and  for more than one line (even if misuse of description list markup on talk pages is too ingrained to change at this point).

Many of the considerations at also apply to description list terms; even though description list terms are not headings, they act like headings in some ways. In at least one regard however, they are not: description list term wikitext should not be used to subdivide large sections. Use a subheading instead (e.g., === Subheading === ).

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 collapsing tables which consolidate information covered in the prose.

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:

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:

to render as:

(note optional  (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.

Line breaks
, as it does not meet Web standards and can cause accessibility problems. Instead, use one of more formatted list styles defined above.

Boilerplate text
Directly before an incomplete list, insert, which will transclude the following onto the page:

Several topic-specific variations of this template are also available within. Only one of or its variations should be added, unless the topic is significantly related to more than one of the subcategories. Do not add both 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 Wi-Fi) and lists of Criticisms and defenses of a political position or other view, such as libertarianism or evolution. Pro and con lists can encapsulate or bracket neutrality problems in an article by creating separate spaces in which different points of view can be expressed. An alternative method is to thread different points of view into running prose.

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.