Here's one way to make a list of items:
1) Log in to Windows
2) Open Microsoft Excel
3) Run macro "Load today's sales"
And here's an alternative:
LW: Log in to Windows
OX: Open Microsoft Excel
RM: Run macro "Load today's sales"
The numbered list is fine, but what if you're in a plain text editor and you want to insert or move lines? You can manually renumber the lines, but that's no fun.
The idea of the second list is to provide a fixed "primary key" for items in a list. You won't have to worry about the numeric sequence; just tell the recipient of the list to follow the items top down. If they have a question, it can begin with something like "For item 'RM', I get an error...".
The other advantage of the non-numeric approach is that you can reference the items more reliably in diagrams, documentation, etc. For example, you can create a list using the alpha-character primary key and then reliably reference "Item OX" in other documentation. Also, the notation "OX" is more meaningful that "Item 2".
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