How to Multi-paragraph List Items?

I’ve not looked at the source of the static HTML page, however on the front end it looks like a perfectly cromulent use of an ordered list to me.

The HTML of 1. (the top part)

<p class="ChildrenOutline">1.<span style="font:7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="color:#0033CC">James
T. Gorham</span></b>  (c1817 – aft1860) James, probably named for his
mother’s father, was clearly the black sheep of the family.  On 25 February
1851, the same day that his father deeded his mill to the children, James T.
Gorham sold his interest to his brother John W. Gorham for $400.<a href="#_ftn22" name="_ftnref" title="" id="_ftnref"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size:10.0pt">[22]</span></span></a>  Daniel Braden’s deposition
referenced above was for the purpose of attaching James T. Gorham’s interest in
the estate of his grandfather James Gunn.  James had defaulted on a number of
notes, for $440 of which his father was security, and Braden was attempting to............

The CSS:

p.ChildrenOutline, li.ChildrenOutline, div.ChildrenOutline
	{margin-top:0in;
	margin-right:0in;
	margin-bottom:0in;
	margin-left:.25in;
	margin-bottom:.0001pt;
	text-indent:-.25in;
	tab-stops:list .25in;
	font-size:12.0pt;
	mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
	font-family:"Times New Roman";
	mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
	mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

Not an ordered list…it is from MS Office (2000) application of old and pasted into one of the old html page builders from MS probably.

(review ‘mso styles’)

@cubecolour, yes it does! it’s actually a two column setup…includes a lot of inline styles too…not to mention a lot of white space…but that is how it was done in 2000…

If I had a site that old, I’d want to redo it in WordPress as well.

Not everyone did it like that in 2000 — I was using Softquad HoTMetaL Pro with table-based layout and stretched 1px × 1px transparent spacer gifs.

The markup will need some work to be turned into ordered lists —if this kind of markup was common back then, maybe there are now automated tools that can help with the conversion.

Yes, the old site uses a standard genealogical numbering scheme called the d’Aboville System in which each successive generation acquires a number and indent. This happens to be the very same thing as “outline numbering” in Word which is why Word was used.

1.
1.1.
1.1.1.
1.1.1.1.
1.1.1.1.1.
1.1.1.1.1.1.
1.1.1.1.1.1.1.

In converting to WP every document that uses three or more levels is becoming a pdf that I link to. Documents that use one or two levels of numbering I am cutting and pasting from the original Word document as plain text into into the WP editor and manually inserting the numbering and footnotes. The second numbering level I handle with individual paragraphs under the list item.

Which leads back to the original question, see? How to take a “list item” that may logically amount to as many as a dozen paragraphs and insert a blank line between those paragraphs.

I know this is not an “ordered list” in the html sense, though it certainly resembles one to the naked eye, and I did not wish to confuse or offend by referring to the genealogical list items as “list items”, but all that has absolutely nothing to do with my original question.

Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone was confused or offended – we’re all here to help after all

Thanks, cube.

I decided to take your first suggestion to add a <div> where I need it. Simple and doesn’t affect any other pages.

Thanks a bunch. I’ll close this as resolved.

Great! good luck with the project