My favorite little Markdown feature: reordering ordered lists

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In short: in Markdown, you can write 1. for every list item instead of 1., 2., 3., etc.

Markdown lets you make ordered lists, like so:

  1. First list item
  2. Second list item
  3. Third list item

I often find myself reordering these lists as I write. What was previously item #3 is now item #2.

Good news: Markdown makes this easy, even for numbered lists!

From the CommonMark spec:

The start number of an ordered list is determined by the list number of its initial list item. The numbers of subsequent list items are disregarded.

That means I can just start every list item with 1. and I don’t have to worry about reordering things myself.

In other words, the following Markdown:

1. One
1. Two
1. Three

Renders like this:

  1. One
  2. Two
  3. Three

This is a small thing but it saves me time, and that’s why it’s my favorite little feature.