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When composing a numbered list, you do it like so:

1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five

Which, unsurprisingly, will render like this:

  1. One
  2. Two
  3. Three
  4. Four
  5. Five

The problem arises when you need to insert a number midway in the list.

1. One
2. Two
<-- INSERT HERE -->
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five

You have some options here.

The first is you re-order the numbers to accomodate the new row.

1. One
2. Two
3. INSERT HERE
4. Three
5. Four
6. Five
  1. One
  2. Two
  3. INSERT HERE
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five

The second is you just put an arbitrary number.

1. One
2. Two
6. INSERT HERE
4. Three
5. Four
6. Five
  1. One
  2. Two
  3. INSERT HERE
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five

The third, and clearner solution is to just number everything 1.

1. One
1. Two
1. INSERT HERE
1. Three
1. Four
1. Five
  1. One
  2. Two
  3. INSERT HERE
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five

As you can see, in all these cases the list is renderend correctly.

My preference is to use the latter where all the indexes are 1.

This isn’t very much of an issue if you are using an intelligent editor that will re-order the indexes for you. For example I am currenty using Typora, which does this for me.

TLDR

If you are working on a numbered list whose elements are fluid, number them all 1 to make it more decipherable, especially if you are not using an intelligent edtor.

Happy hacking!