03 Jul, 2026

My blog has a ton of lists, some of which contain only 1 line per item while others can have more than 1 line per item. I find that for the latter, the list quickly becomes a dense block of text and lacks a visual separation between each item. Take this list from my commentary on my employer’s return-to-office mandate for example:

It’s just a huge block of text, and this is only 3 items. My Canada Day celebration post has 12. I use lists to make things easier to read and follow but the one above is anything but.

The easiest way to add spacing to a list in Bear Blog is to add an empty line between each bullet:

Bear Blog will render that as:

• list

• list

• list

That was what I was doing but I quickly found that I didn’t like that solution because I write all my blog posts in iA Writer and I don’t want so much spacing while drafting in Markdown. I started manually adding the spaces after I copied the final drafts to Bear Blog’s editor and I’m just too lazy to do that for every list going forward. I scoured Google for a solution to no avail so eventually, I said FINE and reluctantly resorted to Claude (I have no background in HTML/CSS/JS so I simply cannot write the code/script myself). Note that this post—and all the non-code, written content on this blog—is written, edited, proofread and formatted 100% by me, though.

Claude gave me some CSS code and a JS script to use, which I tested in CodeRunner offline with my own blog to make sure they worked before making it live.

I wanted to share it in case it helps someone, but please DO NOT use it without testing it first. I don’t know anything about JavaScript and so while the script works for my blog, it might not for yours. Please test it before using!

What the CSS + script does

• If all the items in a list is no longer than 1 line, the line height will be the same as body text
• If only 1 item in a list is longer than 1 line, the line height will be the same as body text
• If more than 1 item in a list is longer than 1 line (like this one), the line height will use the value specified for margin-bottom in the corresponding lines of code in the global CSS theme
• Works on both desktop and mobile
• Nested items will also follow the same rule

Demo (this probably won’t work if you’re reading this on an RSS reader):

If I type this in the Bear Blog editor:

I will get:

• line
• line
• line

The spacing of the list is the same as the line-height for the post body, which is typically set in main {…}.

If I type this:

- line
- line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line 
- line

I will get:

• line
• line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line
• line

The spacing is still the same as the line-height for the post body because only 1 item is longer than 1 line.

If I type this:

- line
- line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line 
- line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line 
- line

I will get:

• line
• line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line
• line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line line
• line

The spacing becomes more roomy and is set by a dedicated value in the global CSS (more below).

To see more examples of this script in practice, you can check out my list-heavy pages:

• Changelog
• Discover
• Editorial Style Guide
• Coffee Log

How to implement

In your global CSS, add:

    main ul.multiline > li,
    main ol.multiline > li { margin-bottom: 0.6em; } /* this controls the spacing when an item in a list is longer than 1 line */

In the footer directive, add:

<script>
  // responsive list spacing
(function () {
  function markMultiline() {
    document.querySelectorAll('main ul, main ol').forEach(list => {
      if (list.closest('.footnotes')) return;

      const items = [...list.children].filter(el => el.tagName === 'LI');

      const wrapCount = items.filter(li => {
        if (li.querySelector('ul, ol')) return false;
        const cs = getComputedStyle(li);
        let lh = parseFloat(cs.lineHeight);
        if (isNaN(lh)) lh = parseFloat(cs.fontSize) * 1.2;
        return li.offsetHeight > lh * 1.5;
      }).length;

      list.classList.toggle('multiline', wrapCount >= 2);
    });
  }
  markMultiline();
  document.fonts.ready.then(markMultiline);
})();
  
</script>

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• If you have existing custom rules for lists, you will have to check if this works well with those.
• This should ignore the footnotes that Bear Blog automatically generates for you (it doesn’t affect the footnotes on my blog), but please double-check.
• If you have other scripts in the footer directive, you will have to check if this interferes with those.

That’s it. If you’re a programmer and have a better way to do this, or can write a better script than what Claude gave me, please let me know! If you end up giving it a try and find issues, feel free to contact me or leave a message on my guestbook! Hope it turns out to be useful to someone :)

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