How to start an ordered list with a number other than one

This week, Marcus Herrmann reminded me of one of my favorite HTML tricks.

If you have an ordered list (ol) and want it to start with a number other than one, you can add the start attribute with the desired first number as its value.

<ol start="4">
	<li>Merlin</li>
	<li>Ursula</li>
	<li>Radgast</li>
</ol>

The example above would start with the number four. Here’s a demo.

This is particularly useful if you have a list split across a few columns and want to keep them consistently numbered. Here, the first .column would run from one to three, and the second would go from four to six.

<div class="row">
	<div class="column">
		<ol>
			<li>Neville</li>
			<li>Hermione</li>
			<li>Cedric</li>
		</ol>
	</div>
	<div class="column">
		<ol start="4">
			<li>Merlin</li>
			<li>Ursula</li>
			<li>Radgast</li>
		</ol>
	</div>
</div>