It’s a Listicle!

Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well.

Recently a former student taught me a new term. The term is listicle. It means an article in the form of a list. The term combines the word list and the last part of article.

On learning the definition, I realized that I had long been reading—and writing—listicles. An example is the article “Twelve Tips for Reviewers”. Another example is the blog post “10 Tips for Writing Effective E-Mail”.

I’ve also heard—and given—presentations in such a format (for instance, “Writing Scientific Papers in English: Tips and Resources” and “Oral and Poster Presentations: Top Tips”). Maybe I should call such presentations list-entations.

If you’ll be writing a listicle (or giving a list-entation), here are some tips:

• Start with a short opening section designed to attract the audience and indicate the focus of the list.
• Present the items in a logical order—for example, chronologically or in order of importance.
• Number the items only if there’s a reason to do so—for example, if the list is of consecutive steps. Otherwise, generally use bullets or subheadings instead.
• Use parallel structure. For example, state each item as a command or begin each item with a subheading in boldface type.
• Try to make the items fairly similar in length.
• Write in a readable style. For example, keep most sentences and paragraphs relatively short, and avoid needlessly long words.
• Consider ending with a short section that sums up in a lively way.

Hmmm, I think I just wrote something resembling a listicle.

Until the next post—

Barbara