Lists

Use lists to help group related items, improve readability and break up long sentences that list three or more items. Make sure you use the appropriate type of list for your needs:

<ul> unordered/bulleted list - used when list order doesn’t matter, like recipe ingredient lists

<ol> ordered/numbered list - used when list order does matter, like steps in a process

<dl> definition list - used to group terms with their respective definitions

See also Writing accessibility.

• Use a heading or a lead-in sentence to let users know what's in a list.
• Put the important words at the beginning of the list item, so that the list is easy to scan.
• All items in a list should use the same tense (e.g. all future tense verbs, all nouns, etc.).
• Try not to repeat the same words at the start of each item in the list.

• Avoid long lists. Most lists should be no more than 7 items. If you have more list items, they may need to be separated into multiple lists. For example, a list of city parks can be separated into quadrants.
• Longer lists may be appropriate in circumstances where list items are in order and it's easy for the user to find the item they need. For example, a list of wards in numerical order.

For code, see List component.