HTML for Bullet Points in an eBay Template

[mangorunner]

@shipscript 

How do I insert a bullet point character (•) into an eBay template so that it will still appear as a bullet point in the Item Description?

• When I copy/paste the bullet point character from Notepad into a template and then use the template to make a listing, eBay changes the character to a question mark. 

• When I insert the code "&#8226" into a template and then use the template, eBay also changes it to a question mark. 

• I have tried inserting HTML unordered list tags (<ul> and </ul>, with <li> and </li> for the listed items) and bullet characters do appear, but eBay inserts an extra blank line between each item in the list - which looks terrible.  The vertical spacing is awful. 

• After invoking a template with the bullet points, I can manually change the question mark into a bullet point (Alt-7) in the standard editing field, and they will stick, but it is very tedious to do for every item in the list, every time I do a listing.

Is there a way to put a bullet character into an eBay template so that it will appear as desired in a listing?  Thank you very much!

[mangorunner]

I also tried inserting "&bull;" into the template.

eBay also turns that into a question mark.  😥

[shipscript]

You are seeing the conversion from UTF-8 to ISO-8959-1 character sets where the symbols are located in different positions in the lookup table.

HTML Entities are designed to survive across character-set limitations and are inserted directly in the text in HTML view.

This is the 6-character "HTML entity" for a bullet

•

and another common request is the copyright

©

These entities should generally survive across the editing functions you are performing, although I have seen entities convert back to symbols in some obscure editing scenarios.

[shipscript]

I also tried inserting "&bull;" into the template.

eBay also turns that into a question mark.

Oh dear, you are in the small percentage of problems.  You'll need to describe all the stages that the text passes through.

What editor do you start with?

What browser do you use to paste the HTML?

Are you using the quick lister or the business/advanced lister?

Where, and at what stage, do you see the bullets disappear?

[mangorunner]

---

@shipscript wrote:

I also tried inserting "&bull;" into the template.

eBay also turns that into a question mark.

Oh dear, you are in the small percentage of problems.  You'll need to describe all the stages that the text passes through.

What editor do you start with?

What browser do you use to paste the HTML?

Are you using the quick lister or the business/advanced lister?

Where, and at what stage, do you see the bullets disappear?

---

Thank you for your reply!

For an editor, I am using plain old Windows 10 Notepad.  My template is very simple.

I am using Firefox 73.0.1 (64-bit).

I am using the Advanced Listing tool on a desktop computer.

The bullet point characters turn into question marks upon moving from the HTML tab to the Standard tab within the "Revise your template" page.  (They also appear as question marks whenever the template is actually used for a new listing, but I presume they were already converted to question marks within the template, so of course they are question marks in a new listing.)

[shipscript]

Presumably, the "revise your template" editor is the same as on the "sell your item" creation page. But just to confirm, can you start a new listing and see if pasting into the HTML view converts on the Standard tab in the same manner? If it is maintained, then save as draft and resurrect that draft and try the same test.

[mangorunner]

---

@shipscript wrote:

Presumably, the "revise your template" editor is the same as on the "sell your item" creation page. But just to confirm, can you start a new listing and see if pasting into the HTML view converts on the Standard tab in the same manner? If it is maintained, then save as draft and resurrect that draft and try the same test.

---

I started a new listing and pasted into the HTML tab.  When moving to the Standard tab, it maintained the bullet points.  I moved back and forth between the two tabs and the bullet points remained throughout.  I saved that new listing as a Draft.

Then, I resurrected that Draft and the bullet points were still there.  I switched back and forth between the two tabs and the bullet points remained.

So that is some progress!  However, I'm still not sure what is the best solution to my template problem.

• Is the best plan to create a template, minus any Description, and then copy/paste the HTML Description from Notepad into the HTML tab for each new listing?

• Or is there a way to make multiple listings from a Draft?  It appears that once the Draft is completed, the only way to reuse it is to "Sell similar".

• I don't want to use "Sell similar" as there is too much dissimilar information to delete.  (That's why I wanted a template).

• Some other way that I have not thought about?

Thanks again for your time and expertise!  Greatly appreciated!

[shipscript]

@mangorunner 

Spent a couple hours testing....

Swapping tabs on the template screen didn't seem to have any effect for me. The change seemed to take effect only after I saved. The entity conversion seems to be occurring in the routine that saves to server. 

Using <li> solves the problem because the bullets survive through the server.

However, in some cases (I need to determine why the variability, since it seems to be related to the size of the code), when <li> is loaded into the seller hub listing form, <br> tags are inserted within the end of each list item.

I tried to reproduce and couldn't do so using simple code. When I put one of my longer listing codes in there, the server condensed the code to a single line and added the <br> tags. Shorter codes were not condensed and the <br> tags were not added.

I first encountered this situation a few years ago and innoculated some of my codes against the issue because it affected intentional formatting in my promo-gallery. This is the code I used:

<style> 
li br { display:none; } /* ebay hub editor adds br tags */ 
</style>

Obviously, if you actually wanted line breaks in a bullet list, this would be a bad solution.

[mangorunner]

Wow, thanks so much for so much of your time!

The more I think about it, I think I pulled up the template to edit it (after the bullet points had already been changed to question marks), changed them back to code on the HTML tab, then switched tabs back to Standard and lost the code.  In other words, I think it had already been converted and I attempted to change it back but it didn't hold when I switched tabs.  So that's when it was converted upon "switching tabs" (not really - as it had already been lost/converted).

Thank you for your special code in the box.  I can't wait to play with it!  I appreciate your lending it to me.  😁 

I'll let you know if it is my "forever solution".  😁

Your knowledge and skills are incredible.  Thank you for everything you give to this community.  What an asset you are!