# Ordered lists with non-number markers

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/ordered-lists-with-non-number-markers/127745>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Tags:** completed\
**Created:** [September 5, 2019, 10:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ordered-lists-with-non-number-markers/127745 "2019-09-05T22:43:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![djr013](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@djr013](https://meta.discourse.org/u/djr013)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2020, 11:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/ordered-lists-with-non-number-markers/127745/6 "2020-04-18T23:20:21Z")

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That’s a good solution if the goal is arbitrary list decorations, but the HTML type attribute is specifically meant for semantically-meaningful situations where the difference between list markers are more than decorative. From [\<ol\> HTML ordered list element - HTML | MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ol)

> Unless the type of the list number matters (like legal or technical documents where items are referenced by their number/letter), use the CSS [`list-style-type`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/list-style-type) property instead.

It’s a common enough need that although the HTML attribute was deprecated in HTML 4.01 (with justification of it being purely stylistic), it was subsequently re-introduced in HTML5 for the specific purpose of encoding reference lists as described by MDN.

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