li

Summary

The HTML List item element (<li>) is used to represent a list item. It should be contained in an ordered list (<ol>), an unordered list (<ul>) or a menu (<menu>), where it represents a single entity in that list. In menus and unordered lists, list items are ordinarily displayed using bullet points. In order lists, they are usually displayed with some ascending counter on the left such as a number or letter

Usage context

Content categories	flow content
Permitted content	flow content
Tag omission	The end tag can be omitted if it is immediately followed by another <li> element or if there is no more content in its parent element.
Permitted parent elements	an <ul>, <ol> or <menu> element. Though not a non-conforming usage, the obsolete <dir> may also be a parent.
Normative document	HTML5, section 4.5.7 (HTML4.01, section 10.2)

Attributes

Like all other HTML elements, this element supports the global attributes.

value

This integer attributes indicates the current ordinal value of the item in the list as defined by the <ol> element. The only allowed value for this attribute is a number, even if the list is displayed with Roman numerals or letters. List items that follow this one continue numbering from the value set. The value attribute has no meaning for unordered lists (<ul>) or for menus (<menu>).

Note: This attribute was deprecated in HTML4, but reintroduced in HTML5.

Gecko 9.0 note

(Firefox 9.0 / Thunderbird 9.0 / SeaMonkey 2.6)

Prior to Gecko 9.0, negative values were incorrectly converted to 0. Starting in Gecko 9.0 all integer values are correctly parsed.

type Deprecated

This character attributes indicates the numbering type:

• a: lowercase letters
• A: uppercase letters
• i: lowercase Roman numerals
• I: uppercase Roman numerals
• 1: numbers

This type overrides the one used by its parent <ol> element, if any.

Usage note: This attribute has been deprecated: use the CSS list-style-type property instead.

DOM interface

This element implements the HTMLLIElement interface.

Examples

<ol>
    <li>first item</li>
    <li>second item</li>
    <li>third item</li>
</ol>	

The above HTML will output:

1. first item
2. second item
3. third item

<ul>
    <li>first item</li>
    <li>second item</li>
    <li>third item</li>
</ul>

• first item
• second item
• third item

For more detailed examples, see the <ol> and <ul> pages.

See also

• Other list-related HTML Elements: <ul>, <li>, <menu> and the obsolete <dir>;
• CSS properties that may be specially useful to style the <li> element:
  • the list-style property, to choose the way the ordinal is displayed,
  • CSS counters, to handle complex nested lists,
  • the margin property, to control the indent of the list item.