Nested Lists in XHTML

Posted Friday 4th July 2008

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Putting lists inside lists does not validate with the W3C Markup Validation Service. The only method to nest lists relatively with valid XHTML is to nest the entire list within a list element.

Example:

<ol>
	<li>List One</li>
	<li>List Two</li>
	<li>
		<ul><li>Sub-list One</li></ul>
	</li>
	<li>List Three</li>
</ol>

The following does NOT validate:

<ol>
	<li>List One</li>
	<li>List Two</li>
	<ul><li>Sub-list One</li></ul>
	<li>List Three</li>
</ol>

Trying to validate it produces the error “document type does not allow element “ul” here; assuming missing “li” start-tag.”. Although nesting it correctly, like in the first code example, it’s very difficult to style or make attractive and orderly.

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