A problem with the List function?

I don’t use the List function often. Both times I’ve used it, my first item vanished. Let me see if I’m doing right:
[ul]
[li]Second, I type in the first item, and click OK.[/li][li]Third, I type in the second item, click OK.[/li][li]Fourth, I type in the third item. Click OK.[/li][li]Fifth, I click OK with the prompt box empty, and the list comes up in the message box.[/li][/ul]
Yup, it happened again. The first item was, "First, I click on the “list with bullets” icon. When the list came up, it was gone. What did I do wrong?

Thanks.

I think that, if you use the bullet-list icon in the reply form, you need to click on it once with either a blank field, 1, or A, depending on whether you want a bulleted, numbered, or alphabetically “numbered” list, prior to typing your first item.

I’ve found it to be much simpler to simply manually code the list:
[ul][li]Type [ list ] (without the spaces) – or list=1 or list=A inside the brackets if you want numbering[/li][li]Type [ * ] without the spaces, hit return, and repeat as needed to create your list[/li][li]Acknowledge the wisdom of OpalCat, of course :)[/li][li]Type the close-code [ /list ] (again without the spaces)[/ul][/li]
I created the above list explaining how to do it manually, manually, without recourse to the little list-making dialog boxes.

The second step in that list should, of course, include typing in the substantive content of the list after the bracketed asterisk for each entry in the list! :o

Okay, I’ll try the first method:
[ul]
[li]First item.[/li][li]Second item.[/li][li]Roman numeral III.[/li][/ul]
Hey, that worked! Thank you, Polycarp. Oh, and Og bless Opal. I got 3 items, but bless her anyway. :wink:

My pleasure, AskNott!

Just out of curiosity…

Is there a term to describe lists of the form A. the first item, B. the second item, C. the third item…? “Alphabetically ‘numbered’” was the best I could come up with on short notice, but there’s got to be proper terminology for it. (“Outline format” is of course hierarchical, where main entries I and II have subsets A and B, which in turn may have infrasubsets 1 and 2…, so that’s not it.)