title: Zettelmarkup: Description Lists
role: manual
tags: #manual #zettelmarkup #zettelstore
syntax: zmk
back: 00001007030000 00001007030800 00001007800000 00001007990000 00001012920513
backward: 00001007030000 00001007030800 00001007800000 00001007990000 00001012920513
box-number: 1
copyright: (c) 2020-present by Detlef Stern <ds@zettelstore.de>
created: 00010101000000
forward: 00001007040000
lang: en
license: EUPL-1.2-or-later
modified: 20220218131155
published: 20220218131155
visibility: public

A description list is a sequence of terms to be described together with the descriptions of each term.
Every term can described in multiple ways.

A description term (short: __term__) is specified with one semicolon (""'';''"", U+003B) at the first position, followed by a space character and the described term, specified as a sequence of line elements.
If the following lines should also be part of the term, exactly two spaces must be given at the beginning of each following line.

The description of a term is given with one colon (""'':''"", U+003A) at the first position, followed by a space character and the description itself, specified as a sequence of [[inline elements|00001007040000]].
Similar to terms, following lines can also be part of the actual description, if they begin at each line with exactly two space characters.

In contrast to terms, the actual descriptions are merged into a paragraph.
This is because, an actual description can contain more than one paragraph.
As usual, paragraphs are separated by an empty line.
Every following paragraph of an actual description must be indented by two space characters.

Example:
```{="zmk"}
; Zettel
: A zettel is the basic unit
  of Zettelstore.

  Zettel can be linked together.
; Zettelstore
: A software that manages zettel.
: The name of the Go implementation.
```
is rendered as:
:::{="example"}
; Zettel
: A zettel is the basic unit
of Zettelstore.

  Zettel can be linked together.
; Zettelstore
: A software that manages zettel.
: The name of the Go implementation.
:::
If you look at the HTML code, you will see that ""Zettel"" has only one description with two paragraphs, while ""Zettelstore"" has two descriptions, each with one paragraph.