# Description List

**URL:** <https://talk.commonmark.org/t/description-list/289>\
**Category:** Extensions\
**Created:** [September 4, 2014, 12:20pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/description-list/289 "2014-09-04T12:20:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 27

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**Author:** ![tin-pot](https://talk.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/tin-pot/32/810_2.png) [@tin-pot](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/tin-pot)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2016, 11:33am UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/description-list/289/27 "2016-12-03T11:33:58Z")

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While this alludes nicely to the “question-answer-dichotomy”, I find the prefix use of question and exclamation marks—typographically—rather un-intuitive and resembling programming notations. Actually more intuitive (in this sense) would, for some folks, be

```
¿ term, glossary entry, question
¡ description, definition, answer

```

(Okay, just kidding!)

But in fact the main disadvantage is that this would just render as

> ? term, glossary entry, question ! description, definition, answer

in any _Markdown_ implementation out there.

A slight variant of this idea would provide at least a readable fall-back rendering, exploiting the fact that we already have two different “unordered” list item markers:

```
* term:
* glossary entry:
* question:
- description, definition, answer

```

And is not really less intuitive either in my opinion. (Using `>` instead of `-` for the `<DD>` element indication would produce even nicer results in the HTML default style, where `<BLOCKQUOTE>` is just rendered with narrower margins. Alas, this might go too far in mis-using existing syntax.)

Or you might find `+` / `-` more appealing:

```
+ term, glossary entry, question:
- description, definition, answer

```

* * *

[Edit:] In the apples-and-oranges discussion [over there](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/inline-lists-a-bananas-b-apples-c-oranges/2304/13) I came up with this syntax (using MIDDLE DOT `·` as a “visible SPACE” here):

```
term:··
glossary entry:··
question:··
····description, definition, answer

```

I think this looks best (in the typescript, without the distracting “`·`” characters), and still renders reasonably in unaware _Markdown_ implementations. But it’s probably not for you if you _hate_ the end-of-line SPACE rule of _Markdown_!

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