Template talk:Bulleted list

Why use this template over asterisks?

* one * two * three

You can use asterisks to make a bulleted list.

• Here's an example
• Second bullet

Why use the template instead?

• this looks
• the same

- Paul2520 (talk) 04:54, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Paul2520 did you try the example in the documentation? Frietjes (talk) 14:00, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Wow, I can't believe I missed that. Thank you for pointing it out! Paul2520 (talk) 14:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Doesn't bullet in Wikipedia Beta

I didn't know about this template, which I find doesn't work as advertised in Wikipedia Beta, at least on smartphones. Copied from Talk:Charles Dutoit # Bullets in infobox:

In Wikipedia Beta on a smartphone or other small mobile device, the "Associated acts" list in the infobox is so narrow that it's almost only one word per line, and the names seem to run together. I've added bullets (U+2022) to keep them visually separate. See this screenshot (that I made in my own phone just now from Wikipedia Beta) to see how they ran together.

This is even more true with lists of people's names in other languages, where the reader may be at a loss to tell where one name ends and another begins. We really need a template for this.

Then I tried using {{Blist}} there instead. See this screenshot (likewise my own work on my own phone just now). Instead of bullets, the individual entries are separated by slightly wider vertical white space: better than nothing, but IMO not as good as bullets.
--Thnidu (talk) 19:09, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't bullet inside a plain list

I can't get the bullets to show if the list is inside {{unbulleted list}}. I guess the no-bullets style cascades down to the inner list, but I can't override it with list_style_type.

• Here's an unbulleted list
  • This sub-list should have a bullet, but doesn't

Hairy Dude (talk) 16:20, 27 May 2019 (UTC) Additionally the inner list has no indentation on the non-mobile site. Hairy Dude (talk) 16:21, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Clarity and examples

With respect, this was not very clear to me. I know some html. I think what we need is some examples of what our list possibilities are. Gladiator-Citizen (talk) 05:56, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Agreed: Collation#Labeling of ordered items specifies that bullet style may be Arabic, Roman, or letters, but Template:Bulleted list lacks a § Template data with a table of parameters seen in other templates (Template:Citation needed for example). — Christopher, Sheridan, OR (talk) 18:02, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Indentation

If an image is placed to the left of this template, the bullets are indented left of ordinary text. Example:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, etc.
Bulleted list:

• one
• two
• three

More ordinary text ...

That doesn't look right to me. Is it fixable? Angusta (talk) 08:07, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Style problem

|style=list-style-type:'☐' fails to perform as expected (same goes for changing it to |list_style= or |item_style=, and/or wrapping the quote chars in nowiki, and/or changing the quotes to double-quote glyphs. In every case, the module is converting them to &-codes (' for single quotes, etc.). But the quoting is syntactically required; just doing |style=list-style-type:☐ is invalid markup, since ☐ or some other character to use is not one of the pre-defined values like square or trad-chinese-informal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:49, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

PS: The code for the |list_style_type= parameter, which does not have this problem, can probably be directly borrowed from {{Ordered list}}. It's weird that it doesn't already work, since both templates are #invoke:list instances.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 

No because the bullet is fake: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/skins/Vector/resources/skins.vector.styles/images/bullet-icon.svg?d4515 An image trumps a character. Template:Ordered list uses characters, which is why it can be styled. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 09:12, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Indeed list-style-type CSS is documented to be usable for the bullet-symbol of unordered lists. Looking at the underlying Module:List, its support is controlled by:

if listType == 'ordered' or listType == 'horizontal_ordered' then 
		data.listStyleType = args.list_style_type or args['list-style-type']

Pinging Mr. Stradivarius, who made that design decision via this edit. DMacks (talk) 09:39, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

There must be a way around this image-trumping-a-character problem, maybe by assigning a specific class to the list. Semantically speaking, there doesn't appear to be any rational use case for an <ol>...</ol> using something like list-style-type:'☐', which would render all the list items beginning with the same character, i.e. unordered. The use case is actually for unordered lists to begin with, where markup like this could be used to represent a ballot listing or something else that might be using box characters.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:46, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Other use-cases for custom bullet in unordered lists include an expandable tree-list, such as seen in {{Category tree}}, and documenting a filesystem, where one might want a folder icon. DMacks (talk) 10:00, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

I think I might've broken this template

How do I force the Visual Editor for this template to include + add undocumented parameters? CheckNineEight (talk) 17:35, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

@CheckNineEight: This is just a limitation in TemplateData. It doesn't handle numerated parameters well. If you go add a dozen or so |2=, |3=, and so on numbered parameters to the TemplateData, it will work fine. To add undocumented parameters in the VisualEditor I believe you either need to edit a template with no TemplateData or that already contains an undocumented parameter. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 20:37, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

@Rjjiii: but variadic templates exist, and they do contain template data. I think this template needs a Lua/module, and I don't know how to add that. CheckNineEight (talk) 02:22, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

@CheckNineEight: It has one; take a look at the source. This template invokes Module:List and can take as many parameters as an editor provides. From the category linked above, Template:ISBN#Template Data has an arbitrary amount of numbered parameters specified. So far as I know, that's the solution for the VisualEditor. It just has some limitations. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:03, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

@Rjjiii: okay, what type should these parameters be: content, string, unbalanced wikitext...? CheckNineEight (talk) 03:17, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

@CheckNineEight: Content is fine. Most types (content, unknown, unbalanced-wikitext, string, and so on) don't have any differences in the current VisualEditor. Once new parameters are added to the TemplateData, it will take a bit for them to show up in the VisualEditor interface. It varies from a few minutes to a day; I'm not sure why some take effect quicker than others. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:29, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

 Done

I imagined there would be differences, at least subtly; if not, I think there should be – like, String would ommit spaces before and after the string of text, while Content leaves them in and even allows for line breaks and paragraph breaks as is on output. Those are my guesses. I'm not sure what Unbalanced wikitext would be and why it's its own thing. CheckNineEight (talk) 04:40, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the TemplateData. And, yes, there probably should be differences. I suspect that it just has not been implemented. There are still quite a few things unfinished in the VisualEditor. Only this year, better compatibility with list-defined references is being worked out. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 06:43, 3 October 2025 (UTC)