HTML 5 <li> Tag

The HTML <li> tag is used for specifying a list item in ordered and unordered lists.

This element can be used in conjunction with the <ol> and <ul> elements to provide each individual list item within those elements. It can also be used with the <menu> element, however, this element is not supported by the W3C HTML5 specification - it is only supported by the WHATWG HTML Living Standard.

Example

The three examples below demonstrate usage of the <li> element.

Attributes

HTML tags can contain one or more attributes. Attributes are added to a tag to provide the browser with more information about how the tag should appear or behave. Attributes consist of a name and a value separated by an equals (=) sign, with the value surrounded by double quotes. Here's an example, style="color:black;".

There are 3 kinds of attributes that you can add to your HTML tags: Element-specific, global, and event handler content attributes.

The attributes that you can add to this tag are listed below.

Element-Specific Attributes

The following table shows the attributes that are specific to this tag/element.

AttributeDescription
valueSpecifies the value of the list item. The value must be a number. Can only be used if the list is an ordered list (i.e. <ol>).

Global Attributes

The following attributes are standard across all HTML 5 tags (although the tabindex attribute does not apply to dialog elements).

For a full explanation of these attributes, see HTML 5 global attributes.

Event Handler Content Attributes

Event handler content attributes enable you to invoke a script from within your HTML. The script is invoked when a certain "event" occurs. Each event handler content attribute deals with a different event.

For a full list of event handlers, see HTML 5 event handler content attributes.