: Best practice when implementing numbered lists in columns? I often implement numbered list for both print and web projects. At times it is just more efficient to break the list into two, three,

@Megan533

Option A is great, it feels intuitive. Reading columns top-to-bottom is natural for Western readers.

Option B is better suited for rows instead of columns, and maybe that's an approach to try; less space between entries, more space between lines. The responsive-friendly point is legitimate, but as it stands now, I think this layout will hinder your content's readability, and the ability to quickly scan and parse information without friction, which should be priority #1 .

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@Speyer780

Option A, for the love of dog, please. Whipping my eyes back and forth to read Option B is exhausting. (This is how Stack Exchange does alphabetical order with the tags, and I hate it.) It's almost like you have to carry too much information from left to right as you hop from one column to the next instead of just skimming downward quickly.

I see almost no advantage to Option B for print or web.

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@Nimeshi706

I think that your first option is a much better practice. I wouldn't treat a numbered list any different than I would design an alphabetical list. Would you setup a book's index in an alternating-column style?

Having a reader's eye scan back and forth across multiple columns doesn't sell the continuity that an ordered list should provide.

Multiple column text for the web is still touchy, but CSS support is growing (and is in most modern browsers)

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