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.

Shortcut MOS:LIST

This page in a nutshell: Lists present similar information in bulleted, enumerated, or definition format. Lists may be embedded in articles or may be stand-alone articles. Lists should have a self-explanatory title, and a lead-in description with further explanation as required. Lists, categories, and navigation templates are synergistic.

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.

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 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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia: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.

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 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.

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, Latin Empire § 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 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.

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}}.

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. See also: WP:Manual of Style/Trivia sections.

Use good markup

Use proper markup: Employ careful wiki markup- or template-based list code (see Help:List for many pointers). 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

 File:Example.jpg|thumb|Caption text
 * Example 1
 * Example 2
 * Example 3
 * Example 4

 * Example 1
 * Example 2
 File:Example.jpg|thumb|Caption text
 * Example 3
 * Example 4

 * 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 defaultedit

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).