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HTML Unordered Lists: Bullet Points with ul and li

Lesson 26 of 81 2 min read By Deepak Paswan Updated Oct 4, 2026

Use an unordered list when the order of items does not matter. Browsers show bullet points by default.

index.html
HTML
<ul>
  <li>Fiction</li>
  <li>Poetry</li>
  <li>Cookbooks</li>
</ul>
  • ul is the list. It means unordered list.
  • li is a list item. Every item must be inside a ul or ol.

What goes inside an item

A list item can hold more than text: links, images, even other lists.

index.html
HTML
<ul>
  <li><a href="fiction.html">Fiction</a></li>
  <li><a href="poetry.html">Poetry</a></li>
</ul>

Changing the bullets

Use CSS to change the bullet style or remove it.

index.html
HTML
<ul style="list-style-type: square;">
  <li>Square bullet</li>
  <li>Another one</li>
</ul>

The most useful values are disc, circle, square and none.

Lists for navigation

Menus are lists of links. Marking them up as lists helps screen readers announce “list of 5 items”. You can remove bullets with CSS and lay the items out in a row.

warning
Using br or paragraphs instead of a list
If the content is a list of things, mark it up as a list. Lines separated with <br> are not recognised as a list by assistive tools.
warning
Putting text directly inside ul
Only li elements may be direct children of ul. Wrap any text in an li.