HTML lists for fun and profit

Everybody loves lists. Remember back in the '70s when we all ate up "The Book of Lists"?That baby sold over 8 million copies and counting.

Lists work especially well in blogs, for many obvious reasons. Lists provide visual relief from run-on copy and they're often efficiently instructive or just fun. Anyone looking to scare up some traffic via the social network sites should be thinking "Best ... " "Dumbest ..." "Easiest ... ."

Top 10s have been the American way up till now, but the blogisphere seems to prefer top 7s. Why? Five items seem a bit bare; 10 items fill more than one computer screen if there's accompanying text, defeating part of the purpose. Your mileage may vary. Top 7 seems weird, but I figured out how to get around in one case, a listing of Jack Nicholson's best DVDs.

If you're blogging with WordPress, the post editor gives you buttons to create either of the most-used lists: "ordered" or "unordered." I don't see that aid on Blogger or Typepad, but lists are easy to hand-code. Here's how.

An ordered (numbered) lists takes these tags:

<ol>
<li>Great to be first</li>
<li>Second's cool, too</li>
<li>Third is OK, I guess</li>
<li>Fourth you're out of the medals</li>
<li>Fifth is for slackers</li>
</ol>

No need to enter numbers. You get:

1. Great to be first


2. Second's cool, too


3. Third is OK, I guess


4. Fourth you're out of the medals


5. Fifth is for slackers

For unordered lists, just sub in the tag with ul and /ul. You get bullets:

• Great to be first


• Second's cool, too


• Third is OK, I guess


• Fourth you're out of the medals


• Fifth is for slackers

You don't have to use numbers or bullets, of course. In this tribute to the late Jerry Falwell (yeah, right), I used graphic pitchforks.

A lot to talk about with lists; look for future episodes in, what else, the list of lists.