Should ol/ul be inside or outside?

Question

Which is standard compliant between these two?

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Answer 1

The short answer is that ol elements are not legally allowed inside p elements.

To see why, let's go to the spec! If you can get comfortable with the HTML spec, it will answer many of your questions and curiosities. You want to know if an ol can live inside a p. So…

4.5.1 The p element:

Categories: Flow content, Palpable content.
Content model: Phrasing content.

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4.5.5 The ol element:

Categories: Flow content.
Content model: Zero or more li and script-supporting elements.

The first part says that p elements can only contain phrasing content (which are “inline” elements like span and strong).

The second part says ols are flow content (“block” elements like p and div). So they can't be used inside a p.

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ols and other flow content can be used in in some other elements like div:

4.5.13 The div element:

Categories: Flow content, Palpable content.
Content model: Flow content.