The Motive Web Design Glossary
lists: definition, ordered, unordered
definition list
A definition list can be used to format a list of terms and definitions, such as would be found in a dictionary. It is one of the few standard HTML elements that includes an information pairing; between the definition term <dt> and definition description <dd>.
Definition lists are often used when formatting search results; at a semantic level the webpage title is the ‘term’ and the page extract the ‘description’.
<dl>
<dt>Term one</dt>
<dd>Definition one</dd>
<dt>Term two</dt>
<dd>Definition two</dd>
<dt>Term three</dt>
<dd>Definition three</dd>
</dl>
- Term one
- Definition one
- Term two
- Definition two
- Term three
- Definition three
ordered list
A ordered list can be used to format a series of items to indicate a specific hierarchy; e.g. rank or process.
<ol>
<li>First item</li>
<li>Second item</li>
<li>Third item</li>
</ol>
- First item
- Second item
- Third item
unordered list
An unordered list can be used to format a series of items with no specific hierarchy.
<ul>
<li>Item</li>
<li>Item</li>
<li>Item</li>
</ul>
- Item
- Item
- Item
elements/tags, semantic markup
References and further reading
- Definition
Lists - Misused or… (Max Designs)
Modifying the presentation of definition lists using CSS (includes examples and sample code). - Designer
Bullets (Andrew U)
A method of creating custom bullets with CSS, using background images rather than redefining the bullet glyph. - Lists in HTML (4.0) documents (W3C Recommendation)
Glossary A-Z