 | Thisguideline is a part of the English Wikipedia'sManual of Style. Editors should generally follow it, thoughexceptions may apply.Substantive edits to this page should reflectconsensus. When in doubt, discuss first onthis guideline's talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell:
|
| Manual of Style | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
By topic area
| ||||
| Wikipedia guidelines | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Behavioral | |||
| |||
| Content | |||
| Editing | |||
| |||
| Style | |||
| Notability andDeletion | |||
| Project content | |||
| Search | |||
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.
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.
List articles are encyclopedia pages consisting ofintroductory 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 (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.
Thetitle and bullet style, or vertical style, is common for stand-alone lists. These Wikipedia articles follow theWikipedia:Stand-alone lists style guideline.
Embedded lists arelists used within articles that supplement the article's prose content. They are included in the text itself or appended, and may be intable format. Wikipedia uses severalstandard appendices, usually in list format, as well asnavigational 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 contravenepolicy.
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,New York City was a center for theBeaux-Arts architectural movement, attracting the talents of such great architects asStanford White andCarrere 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. TheFlatiron Building, standing 285 ft (87 meters) high, was one of the tallest buildings in the city upon its completion in 1902, made possible by its steel skeleton. It was one of the first buildings designed with a steel framework, and to achieve this height with other construction methods of that time would have been very difficult. TheWoolworth Building, a neo-Gothic "Cathedral of Commerce" overlooking City Hall, was designed byCass Gilbert. At 792 feet (241 meters), it became the world's tallest building upon its completion in 1913, an honor it retained until 1930, when it was overtaken by40 Wall Street. That same year, theChrysler Building took the lead as the tallest building in the world, scraping the sky at 1,046 feet (319 m). More impressive than its height is the building's design, byWilliam Van Alen. Anart 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,New York City was a center for theBeaux-Arts architectural movement, attracting the talents of such great architects asStanford White andCarrere 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 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 perWP:Summary style. Timelines and chronologies can be useful supplements to prose descriptions of real-world histories. Thecontent of a list is governed by the samecontent policies as prose, including principles ofdue weight andavoiding 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 (includingWP:Trivia sections). Consider whether prose is more appropriate. Specific advice regarding timelines is given inWikipedia:Timeline standards.
"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:
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 shouldnot repeat links that appear in the article's body.
Reference lists show information sources outside of Wikipedia. The two most common types are:
Wikipedia is not a link collection and articles with only external links areactively discouraged, but it is appropriate to reference more detailed material from theInternet. This is particularly the case when you have used a web site as an important source of information.
Most lists on Wikipedia are item lists, but not all. Specialized types of lists include:
Lists have three main purposes:
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.,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 thelists of basic topics and more comprehensivelists 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 othernavigation templates.
Some lists are useful for Wikipedia development purposes. Thelists 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 ofred 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.
Redundancy of lists and categories is beneficial because the two formats work together; the principle is covered in the guidelineWikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. Like categories, lists can be used for keeping track of changes in the listed pages, using theRelated 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.
For astand-alone list, the list'stitle is the page name. For an embedded list, the list's title is usually a section title (for instance,Latin Emperor § Latin emperors of Constantinople, 1204–1261), 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 likecomplete andnotable 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.
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}}.
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. Manystub articles can be improved by converting unnecessary lists into encyclopedic prose.See also:WP:Manual of Style/Trivia sections.
| Prose | List with no content |
|---|---|
| The20th-century architecture of New York City includes numerous icons of architecture, most notably its strikingskyscrapers. In the first few decades of the century, the city became a center for theBeaux-Arts movement, represented by architectsStanford White andCarrère and Hastings. New York's new skyscrapers included theFlatiron Building (1902), where Fifth Avenue crosses Broadway atMadison Square;Cass Gilbert'sWoolworth Building (1913), a neo-Gothic "Cathedral of Commerce" overlooking City Hall; theChrysler Building (1929), a pure expression ofArt Deco; and theEmpire State Building (1931). Modernist architectRaymond Hood, andLever House after World War II, began the clusters of "glass boxes" that transformed the classic skyline of the 1930s, culminating in theWorld Trade Center towers (1973). | 20th-century architecture of New York City
|
Use proper markup: Employ careful wiki markup- or template-based list code(seeHelp:List for many pointers). Especiallydo not leave blank lines between items in a list, since this causes theMediaWiki software to misinterpret each item as beginning a new list. (There areHTML 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.
| 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 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).
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.
Usesentence 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:
Use the same grammatical form for all items in a list – avoid mixing sentences and sentence fragments as items.
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 enablessection 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.
Lists should have introductory material; for stand-alone lists, this should be thelead 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.List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach § Listing Bach's compositions). Lists and their supporting material must comply with standard Wikipedia content policies and guidelines, includingWikipedia:Neutral point of view and should not createcontent forks.
Exercise caution whenself-referencing Wikipedia, to ensure any self-reference is acceptable. For example,notability is often a criterion used forstand-alone lists (and sometimes embedded ones), but many other self-references create problems. To include a self-reference, format it with{{Self-reference link}}.
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.
Although lists may be organized in different ways, they must always be organized. The most basic form of organization isalphabetical ornumerical (such asList of Star Wars starfighters), though if items have specific dates achronological 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 headingsA,B,C would be followed byD (rather than1903), more complex systems should be just as explicit. If alist of Australians in international prisons contains the headingsArgentina andCambodia (organization by country), it would be inappropriate for an editor to add the headingDrug 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 bysome 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.
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 perpolicy.
Some material maynot be appropriate for reducing or summarizing using thesummary style method. An embedded list may need tobe 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:
| Prose | List |
|---|---|
| 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 dictionary orlexical definition,intensional definition,extensional definition,ostensive definition,stipulative definition,operational definition,theoretical definition,persuasive definition, anddefinition 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: |
Lists, whether they arestand-alone lists (also called list articles) orembedded 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: thecore content policies ofVerifiability (throughgood sources in the item'sone or more references),No original research, andNeutral point of view, plus the other content policies as well. Content should besourced where it appears withinline citations if the content contains any of thefour 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 mightbe linked.
| Content policies |
|---|
It is important tobe bold in adding or editing items on a list, but also to balance boldness withbeing thoughtful, a balance which all content policies are aimed at helping editors achieve. Edits of uncertain quality can befirst 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 reachingconsensusbefore 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 iswell referenced and that the list as a whole represents aneutral point of view. Content should besourced where it appears, and provideinline citations if it contains any of thefour kinds of material absolutely required to have citations.
When an item meets the requirements of theVerifiability 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 Wikipediadoes 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, theBiographies of living persons policy applies.
When reliable sources disagree, the policy of keeping aneutral 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 sideits due weight through coverage balanced according to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published reliable sources.
When adding to a stand-alone list withlinks 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 ofcompeting 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.
You can add one or more suitablesubcategories ofCategory: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 asort key to sort alphabetically by topic.
There are several ways of presenting lists on Wikipedia.
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:
For details, see§ Bulleted and numbered lists, above.
| Wikitext | HTML | Appearance |
|---|---|---|
== Title of list ==* Example 1* Example 2* Example 3 | <h2><spanclass="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> | Title of list
|
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 tounbulleted orhorizontal 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 affectsaccessibility (screen readers will tell the visually impaired user there are multiple lists),[1] and interferes with machine-parseability of the content forreuse. 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><spanclass="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> | Title of list
|
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.
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(seeTemplate:Plainlist § Technical details).
| Wikitext | HTML | Appearance |
|---|---|---|
== Title of list =={{Plainlist|* Example 1* Example 2* Example 3}} | <h2><spanclass="mw-headline"id="Title_of_list">Title of list</span></h2><divclass="plainlist"><ul><li>Example 1</li><li>Example 2</li><li>Example 3</li></ul></div> | Title of list
|
== Title of list =={{Unbulleted list| Example 1| Example 2| Example 3}} | <h2><spanclass="mw-headline"id="Title_of_list">Title of list</span></h2><divclass="plainlist"><ul><li>Example 1</li><li>Example 2</li><li>Example 3</li></ul></div> | Title of list
|
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}}.
Use a numbered (ordered) list only if any of the following apply:
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:
For details, see§ Bulleted and numbered lists, above.
Example:
| Wikitext | HTML | Appearance |
|---|---|---|
== Title of list ==# Example 1# Example 2# Example 3 | <h2><spanclass="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> | Title of list
|
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.
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 |
|---|---|
<oltype="a"><li>this</li><li>list</li><li>uses</li><li>letters</li><li>as</li><li>indexes</li></ol> |
|
<olstart="15"><li>this</li><li>list</li><li>starts</li><li>from</li><li>15</li></ol> |
|
<oltype="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:
The start valuecan be negative, but only if the list uses numbers as indexes. Otherwise, bizarre results are achieved.
| Wikitext | Appearance |
|---|---|
<oltype="a"start="-2"><li>definitely</li><li><b>not</b></li><li>a</li><li>good</li><li>idea!</li></ol> |
|
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 aglossary, where it is preferable to other styles. Wikipedia has special markup fordescription 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 |
|---|---|
; name 1: This is the value associated with the first name and may be quite long, but must be one unbroken line in the source.; name 2: This is the value associated with the second name, which may also be long. |
|
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.
Both of these wikitext markup styles are functionality-limited and easily broken. A major weakness of both variants 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 a solution, 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.(For full details on the problems with colon-delimited list markup, seeWP:Manual of Style/Glossaries/DD bug test cases.)
The basic format of atemplate-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 betteras sections in a stand-alone list article, whiletables 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 listsshould 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 visualindentation, 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(seeWP:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Indentation for details). More accessible indentation templates can be used, e.g.,{{in5}} or one of its variants for one line, and{{block indent}} 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 atWP:Manual of Style § Section headings 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 or otherwise to obtain a boldfacing effect. Use a subheading instead (e.g.=== ... === markup) where one is appropriate, or normal boldface ('''...''') otherwise.(For more detail and examples, seeWP:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Pseudo-headings.)
| Prose | List |
|---|---|
|
|
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 tocollapsing tables whichconsolidate 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.
In situations such as infoboxes, horizontal lists may be useful. Examples:
| Approach | Output | Code |
|---|---|---|
| List with commas (plain text) | Entry 1, entry 2, entry 3 | Entry 1, entry 2, entry 3 |
| List with{{Hlist}} |
| {{hlist|Entry 1|entry 2|entry 3}} |
| List with{{Flatlist}} |
| {{flatlist|* Entry 1* entry 2* entry 3}} |
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.
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:
(note optionaldf=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. SeeWikipedia:Stand-alone lists § Chronological ordering.
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
cake<br />cheese<br />chocolate<br /> | cake |
This "pseudo-list" method isdeprecated, as it does not meet Web standards and can causeaccessibility problems. Instead, use one of more formatted list styles defined above.
Directly before an incomplete list, insert{{incomplete list}}, which willtransclude the following onto the page:
 | This list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items. |
Several topic-specific variations of this template are also available withinCategory: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.
These are lists of arguments for and against a particular contention or position. They include lists ofAdvantages and disadvantages of a technology or proposal (such asWi-Fi) and lists ofCriticisms and defenses of a political position or other view, such aslibertarianism orevolution. Pro and con lists can encapsulate or bracketneutrality 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.
class="sortable", this page explains how