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  1. The number to the left shows up as a "1." even though I typed in "364." Very annoying.
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3 Answers 3

11

...but by design.

From Markdown Editing Help:

A numbered <ol> list:

1. Numbered lists are easy
2. Markdown keeps track of the numbers for you
7. So this will be item 3.

As a workaround type a backslash before the dot:

364\. This won't become a list. (But hence it won't indent nicely either. 
      No matter if you try to indent yourself. It won't indent nicely.)

364. This won't become a list. (But hence it won't indent nicely either. No matter if you try to indent yourself. It won't indent nicely.)

7
  • 1
    I take advantage of this feature all the time if you check the markdown source of any of my posts that contain ordered lists.
    – Welbog
    Jan 11, 2010 at 19:04
  • That's truly an advantage indeed ;-) meta.stackoverflow.com/revisions/34480/list
    – Arjan
    Jan 11, 2010 at 19:27
  • Yuck, so I have to go out of my way to prevent it mangling what I typed, rather than being able to specify when I do want it to mangle my input. :-( Jan 11, 2010 at 20:13
  • For most the quest is about getting newlines ;-) meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26011/… (But then, I guess it's much more of a quest for those on non-technical stackexchange.com sites, not so much on our SO/SF/SU?)
    – Arjan
    Jan 11, 2010 at 21:07
  • Nice thing is that you don't even need to type the numbers. You can just use 1. for the first, and then - for the next ones. I like that feature :) Restarting lists on a different number would be nice though... but I don't think this is too easy in html either? Or perhaps there is some newer CSS thing to do that as well... probably is...
    – Svish
    Jan 12, 2010 at 11:17
  • 2
    Yup, the "Markdown keeps track of the numbers for you" really is "your browser will start at 1 and increment for each item"... HTML did allow for <ol start="42">, but that has been deprecated, I guess in favour of CSS counter-reset: item 41; and li:before styles referring to such counter -- w3schools.com/css/pr_gen_counter-reset.asp
    – Arjan
    Jan 12, 2010 at 11:32
  • 1
    Meanwhile, start is no longer deprecated. And restarting numbering is now supported on SE as well, @Svish.
    – Arjan
    Nov 9, 2014 at 15:20
6

The other alternative is to do lists in a format Markdown doesn't understand

1) Like

2) This

3) List

But as previously noted, you won't get proper list indentation. This actually has some advantages when it comes to code blocks being mixed in with lists..

2
  • Good info to have. I'll keep that workaround in mind. Jan 12, 2010 at 19:42
  • It seems this (particular method) has changed.
    – Joachim
    May 15, 2023 at 9:03
2

You can now start lists with numbers other than 1.; see Can't start a numbered list on a number other than 1.

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