Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Ordered lists have the same basic structures as unordered lists, as shown in this simple example.

<ol><li>Get out of bed</li>
      <li>Take a shower</li>
      <li>Walk the dog</li></ol>

By default, user agents automatically number the list items in ordered lists . There is no need to add the number in the source.

Style sheets may be used to change the numbering system (list-style-type) as described in Chapter 23. The list-style-type property replaces the deprecated type attribute that specifies the numbering system for lists, as shown in Table 10-1.

Table 10-1. Values of the deprecated type attribute

Type value	Generated style	Sample sequence
1	Arabic numerals (default)	1, 2, 3, 4
A	Uppercase letters	A, B, C, D
a	Lowercase letters	a, b, c, d
I	Uppercase Roman numerals	I, II, III, IV
i	Lowercase Roman numerals	i, ii, iii, iv

Use the deprecated start attribute to start the counting of the list items at a particular number. This markup example creates an ordered list using lowercase letters that starts counting at 10.

    <ol type="a"start="10">
    <li>See quirksmode.org/css/tests/</li>
    <li>According to the W3C Working Group</li>
    <li>See the XHTML 1.1 Working Document</li>
    </ol>

The resulting list would look like this, because “j” is the tenth letter in the alphabet:

j. See quirksmode.org/css/tests/

k. According to the W3C Working Group

l. See the XHTML 1.1 Working Document

There is a CSS alternative to the start attribute using the counter-reset property, but it is poorly supported by browsers ...