It's all in the numbers

As it happens, I am blogging from a local coffee shop with bloggers Matthew Yglesias and Brian Beutler. Yes, this is the glamorous blogging lifestyle you've read so much about.

At any rate, Matt and I were explaining the secrets of creating an ordered (numbered) list and an unordered (bulleted) list in html. At which point, Brian asked: why is a bulleted list "unordered"?

Matt and I responded, with stunning obviousness, that an ordered list has numbers. But then Brian showed us a preview of the post he was writing and sensibly asked "Is there any doubt about what order you should click on the links?"

Now I am trying to formulate a philosophy of numbered lists that distinguishes them from bulleted lists. Reader thoughts are welcome.

Comments

My only thought is G-L-A-M-O-R-OU-S

Posted by Freddie | September 7, 2007 10:06 AM

If I place numbers beside a list, I am assigning relative value to the merits of the information - at least in the mind of the reader. Seems simplistic, but there you go.....

Posted by Michael W | September 7, 2007 10:24 AM

Mental meandering:

All lists are inherently ordered, top to bottom. One reason for numbering rather than bulleting some lists might be for future reference; "item 13a5" is easier to deal with than "the fifth sub-sub-bullet under the first sub-bullet under the thirteenth bullet." Even "item 5" is easier to find than counting down to the fifth bullet.

I suppose that numbering also reinforces the importance of the sequence, while bulleting may convey a sense of unimportance to the sequence. Even a bulleted list should have an inherent logic to it, though: in/decreasing order of importance, or logical build, for example.

With a numbered list, of course, you have the option of explicitly inverting the sequence, as with Letterman. Perhaps the underlying philosophy is that if the sequence itself conveys information, it should be numbered.

Posted by rafinlay | September 7, 2007 10:25 AM

How about "indexed" rather than "ordered"?

Posted by lex | September 7, 2007 10:56 AM

I will now quote from Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry.

page 35:
"Be sure that lists are unmistakably lists. You do not want the reader to confuse a list with steps, which denote actions....

Use unnumbered (bulleted) lists when the entries are not dependent on the sequence in which you present them. When the entries are dependent on sequence, use numbered lists with numerals and letters to build the hierarchy."

page 39:
Writing Bulleted Lists
"Use bulleted (unnumbered) lists when the sequence of the entries is not important. Make sure that the items in a bulleted list are similar in value."

page 40:
Writing Numbered Lists
"Use numbered lists when the order of the entries is important. However, exercise caution. Many readers are impatient to complete tasks and could mistake numbered lists for procedures. Follow these guidelines:

*Write the text for numbered lists in a style that differs from the style of instructional steps in a procedure.
Do not assume that a reader will notice any format differences between numbered lists and numbered steps.

*Avoid using verbs in the imperative form. Using an imperative verb could lead a reader to believe that the numbered lists are procedures. Use gerunds or participles instead."

[examples not included]

Posted by bill | September 7, 2007 11:03 AM

Is there any particular reason why we can't just use the terms "numbered" and "bulleted"? Must opaque jargon be injected into every single corner of human knowledge?

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | September 7, 2007 11:04 AM

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/lists.html

As to your question, expecting *any* part of the HTML specification to make sense is giving the W3C way too much credit.

Posted by Bergamot | September 7, 2007 11:05 AM

It's just that the html naming is confusing. For a bulleted list, you use the unordered code even though there's usually some sort of order to a bulleted list. Just think of it this way [ol] = numbered and [ul] = unnumbered.

Posted by bill | September 7, 2007 11:08 AM

"Now I am trying to formulate a philosophy of numbered lists that distinguishes them from bulleted lists."

You have faaar too much time on your hands.

Posted by john | September 7, 2007 11:31 AM

I believe your original ordered = numbered is correct. That kind of list (numbered) you can discuss over the phone and say go to bullet two etc.

The non-numbered list you can't

Posted by TJIT | September 7, 2007 11:56 AM

I think you're over thinking this. HTML was invented by people interested in page layout. They had to come up with different names for lists that had numbers and lists that didn't. They chose "ordered" and "unordered".

Think about the kind of people we're talking about here: people who spend their lives coming up with ways to abstract content apart from layout. These are the last people in the world to care about terminology. Ordered/unordered, numbered/unnumbered, they didn't care about the name, only that the abstraction works the way they intended. As far as these people are concerned there might even be a medium somewhere that could display the list in no particular order at all.

The same people decided that the two kinds of division in an HTML document, a block division versus and in-line division, would be named DIV and SPAN. Aren't both of them DIVisions? Sure, but the names aren't important, only the underlying content. They had dozens of things to name, some without obvious names at all. and they just charged ahead (although some tags do have some historical reasons). Why is it but not ?

A list by any other name would smell just as sweet.

Posted by Rob | September 7, 2007 11:59 AM

An ordered list can also be

a.
b.
c.

etc. It's not just "numbered", it's EXPLICITLY versus IMPLICITLY ordered. An ordered list ENFORCES that ordering via sequential labeling; an unordered list does not, though even an unordered list does have a rudimentary "order" (top to bottom).

Posted by liberalrob | September 7, 2007 12:01 PM

This gets some play in Tufte's "Cognitive Style of Powerpoint" essay. Bulleted lists may be interpreted in several ways: ascending/descending importance, chronological, random, stream of consciousness, etc.

In the absence of instructions from the author, the reader does not know how to assign values to the listed items.

Posted by Matt B | September 7, 2007 12:12 PM

Shorter me: rafinlay nailed it.

Posted by liberalrob | September 7, 2007 12:12 PM

One has numbers and one has dots.

Posted by FGFM | September 7, 2007 12:25 PM

It's also worth noting that unordered lists are used for a lot more than creating bulleted lists. You can do comment threads and toplevel menus with them, as two examples. You can even do breadcrumbs (the "Home -> Category -> Post" thing you see on some sites) with ordered ("numbered") lists.

So if they were explicitly named "bulleted" or "numbered", you'd have another of those "click the Start button to turn off your computer" moments whenever you used them to do something interesting. "To do a menu, use the bulletlist tag, but make sure to turn off the bullets."

Posted by Jeff Licquia | September 7, 2007 12:30 PM

While these are what many software engineers call "leaky abstractions", here's what should be happening:

The HTML SHOULD only be about the semantics of the information you're laying out. So, if you have an ordered list, use 'ol' and for an unordered list, use 'ul'.

The actual appearance SHOULD be specified in the CSS and not the HTML. So, you'd write

<ol id="somelist">
<li>First item</li>
<li>Second item</li>
</ol>

and in the CSS, have

somelist {
list-style-type: circle
}

(hopefully the syntax there is right, I don't actually do this in practice, only in theory)

Thus separating the semantics and the visual display.

Of course, when writing a blog entry, most of us are too lazy to do that, so we use the entry with the wrong semantics but with the default visual appearance we prefer.

Posted by Dan | September 7, 2007 12:56 PM

Jaysus jumping Christ, why are you talking about this? Can you find anything with less relevance to write about?

Posted by Duros62 | September 7, 2007 12:57 PM

Lists do NOT have to be presented vertically, the specifications make it clear this is up to the browser (the "agent").

I would have thought that the agent would have more FLEXIBILITY in presenting an "unordered" list, but I would be wrong....from the specs:

"Ordered and unordered lists are rendered in an identical manner except that visual user agents number ordered list items. User agents may present those numbers in a variety of ways. Unordered list items are not numbered."

Posted by Jens Fiederer | September 7, 2007 1:10 PM

What I want to see is a disordered list.

Posted by Njorl | September 7, 2007 1:22 PM

What you're seeing is the difference between structure and presentation. HTML started out as a way of expressing structure, and then got crufted up with presentation in the browser wars. With CSS, the structure and presentation can be separated again.

Posted by Kevin Marks | September 7, 2007 2:35 PM

If you want to elicit Wittegnsteinian analytic meanderings, you should really try to ask after something that isn't completely inane.

Posted by cs | September 7, 2007 3:40 PM

Geeze, lighten up folks. Inanity can be fun. If you need serious policy discussion, you shouldn't be reading this deep in the comments.

Posted by rafinlay | September 7, 2007 5:12 PM

Rob writes:

I think you're over thinking this. HTML was invented by people interested in page layout. They had to come up with different names for lists that had numbers and lists that didn't. They chose "ordered" and "unordered".

...and he has it absolutely 100% backwards.

HTML was not invented by people interested in page layout. It was invented by people disinterested in page layout, and interested in semantic markup.

And, by "people", I mean "person": Tim Berners Lee.

HTML was a stripped down version of SGML.

The page layout stuff came later, and was backed into. ...much to the distress of the first generation HTML folks, because it muddied semantics and display in one markup system, instead of a cleaner two-level architecture (as was later achieved with the addition of CSS).

So: knowing that SGML / HTML were semantic markup languages, what does that mean?

It means that they were intentionally not associated with a particular display technology. It is not just "theoretically possible", but in fact a core principle of these languages that display technologies are orthogonal to semantics, and it's just as valid to "display" an HTML document via a speech synthesizer or brail readout as it is to print it on the page.

In this context, was do "ordered" and "unordered" mean? Exactly that! A display technology can reorder the element of an unordered list, and it has not violated either the letter or the spirit of the concept "unordered list". A display technology can not, however, reorder the elements of an ordered list without committing at least a karmic foul.

The fact that 99.9% of all HTML and SGML ever written is used in blogs, and 99.9% of blogs are viewed in web browsers, and 99.9% of webrowsers display unordered lists (a) with round bullets; (b) in order is interesting, but does not get to the heart of HTML.

Posted by TJIC | September 7, 2007 11:44 PM

How about when you're in a meeting and you say, "Let's review item 12 on the list" instead of, "Let's review the item near the upper middle half of the page, the one that begins with, 'repurpose all hard drives less than 100 GB.'"

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