[0]https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/pi/2016_2017/phil/...

Notability the article is not about hierarchical bulleted lists.

    - Lists are appealing
    - Lists promise value quickly
    - Lists promise different types of value
    - Lists promise limited complexity
    - Lists promise many entrance points
    - A list is a contract between the writer and reader
    - A list promises “list-tractability”
    - How to stop worrying

    - I only had to read those headings and check the images to read this article in under a minute. 
    - I'll never know if something was lost. 
    - Youtube also has lists nowadays. 
    - I'm a skimmer and I feel bad.
    - I opened a book yesterday and it was very relaxing.

>“Theory and practice of effective sleep”

>“Seven insights about sleep”

hmm, the first one sounds like an in-depth exhaustive text on the subject that if I have the time to read it I will definitely learn something from.

The second sounds like SEO listicle crap at least 5 of which insights will be really obvious things that only an idiot would need explained to them, 1 of which will sound deep and insightful but if I read the first text will turn out to have been misinterpreted and actually mean almost the obvious of what is supposed, and 1 of which might be slightly helpful.

I think I might want to read the first, but only if I really want to learn something about sleep, and I might read the second one for some reason at some point and immediately think why do I waste my time with this stuff.

1. I write ideas without worrying about transitions

2. I can quickly review if I’m missing any important point

3. Forces me to simplify what I try to communicate with less words and more meaning

But it is a strange leap from "Too much writing without more structure is hard to read" to "You should use lists specifically". It's perfectly valid to use, you know, headers. Subheaders. Actual lists, bulleted and ordered. Horizontal rules if you're feeling feisty and/or old school. Essayist does try to give motivations but I feel like there was significant cheating by comparing lists to unstructured essays. Lists vs. structured essays are a much more give & take situation, where lists only triumph in certain limited ways.

I love lists for emails - whenever I write an email that mentions more than one point I put everything in numbered paragraphs. Sometimes I also do 1) 2) 3) for information and a) b) c) for questions that refer back to the numbered list. Makes it a lot easier for followups to stay on track.

/quote/

Anytime an Amazon worker has an idea to discuss, they’re asked to structure their pitch in the form of a 4-6 page memo, which the company calls a “narrative.”

Well structured, narrative text is what we’re after rather than just text. If someone builds a list of bullet points in word, that would be just as bad as powerpoint.

The reason writing a 4 page memo is harder than “writing” a 20 page powerpoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what’s more important than what, and how things are related.

Powerpoint-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss over ideas, flatten out any sense of relative importance, and ignore the innerconnectedness of ideas.

/unquote/

I value outliners a lot, but when I started writing down my ideas in full sentences, I was forced to create arguments more clearly and explicitly, and that helps me get clearer about my problem domain.

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/jeff-bezos-email-against-...

1. Easy for replies to refer to a certain portion of my mail (just mention the number)

2. Lists result in shorter emails with less fluff - always an advantage for work related communication

3. Especially for people with less writing skills, lists make it clearer what the priorities are. “Item 4” is of more importance than “Item 2b”. If you’re only using words, you need mastery of language to convey that.

This article is a perfect example. These items are all supporting a thesis that the visual nature of lists provides clear value to the reader. The author asserts lists "allow readers to quickly and easily get what they want". But the text doesn't take the time to properly establish why that is the most important property of writing.

Because the author hasn't properly sold the core idea, the subsequent list items just come across as a shotgun approach. It seems as though the author thinks that it they throw out enough ideas one of them will stick, or that the reader will assume that the sheer volume of points means the idea is solid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists

The plugin’s kaleidoscopic colour functionality visually incentivizes writing in list format constantly. The colours are enjoyable to look at, and you get more of them on your screen each time you indent a list item.

    which
    - makes you organize your thoughts differently
      - because
        - the more colour, the better
      - e.g.
        - you’ll want to write like this

Written lists.

Lists written out to try and impart knowledge and information to the reader.

I do like being able to dip in to things, in an exploratory, unconnected fashion, but lists, especially in modern SEO writing for the web, have turned in to some bastardized version of useful information.

My usual train of thought is "a list that isn't a list", e.g. https://justinlloyd.li/blog/3d-printer-purchase/ for a 3D printer purchase or my three year long train of thought on prime number research at https://justinlloyd.li/blog/prime-numbers/.

On a side note, when I am writing a lengthy article, I usually assemble a list of bullet points first, the outline, and then convert the bullet points into prose, and then re-order the prose, then edit the prose so that it flows.

But I think lists are a terrible, terrible travesty of the modern web, because they are so abused.

And bullet pointed lists in a presentation, I consider those kinds of things to be used by people who don't understand the subject, to teach people even less knowledgable about the subject, everything that they know. Which ain't much.

I'm not sure this works out for a math textbook, or any book at all. We build our understanding and knowledge by layering up abstractions, and the abstractions form a graph. A linear list to cover all the preqreq will be tedious and repetitive, to say the least.

I’m personally still partial to a good old blog posts with paragraphs, both for writing and reading, but like the author I can’t help but notice that readers love lists.

[1] http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ranker_sucks

This is similar to some academic writing I've done where the author of a section writes each sentence on a separate line so that it can be commented on more easily before all the sentences are rejoined into paragraph form.

I mean this with all sincerity, but dear god, no, I certainly am not. My conditioning tells me that the second option (the listicle) is probably going to be worthless and filled with terrible advertising.

> So, say you’ve written something that feels ranty and disorganized. It’s often useful to retrospectively turn it into a list. If this takes a lot of reorganization, that’s good—it means you’re untangling your ideas. And you don’t need to write a “pure” list—use other sections if you need them. If you still feel lame after all this, just give the piece a non-list title and leave the list items unnumbered. No one will even notice what you’ve done.

* it's funny-- the list example appeals to me for content like HN posts.

* for something like a prose analysis of the first 33 measures of the first movement of Beethoven's Op. 101, the non-list version is more appealing. In fact, my prejudice is that the list version will be both a gloss and factually inaccurate.

* if I were a prankster I'd name this phenomenon after a physicist friend and subtly spread it as a low-effort shorthand for critiquing the quality of HN posts.

Edit: almost forgot-- my post should be formatted as a list

This displays something cut-down into the structure of the document, so the headings can be shrunk with their included text. I found it in the past to be a really useful way to build a document before it's formatted. i.e. put in all the headings you think you will need first, then gradually fill out the text under each heading. Once the document starts to flesh out, you will find bits that naturally fit together, so you can restructure and have something cohesive.

After that, format away in the normal mode.

lists give me an idea, or at least the illusion of knowing content length beforehand or very early on.

When i see the first list item and the title says "seven of those", i can gauge my time investment in consuming that content.

It's important that this is abstract, as "500 words" has little intuitive meaning but "4 pieces of roughly this text block" is a very natural way of evaluating my time commitment, subconsciously.

For a better example of this type of writing, I recommend looking at how Rails Guides are written: https://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_validations.htm...

http://www.paulgraham.com/nthings.html

Back in the day it was common for each item on the list to be its own page. These days, I'm guaranteed to have a popup to subscribe to a mailing list.

things we knew decades ago: bullet points nice; section & section headers nice; summaries nice

- I was not disappointed.

- The insight is nevertheless good.

- Stop worrying

- Structure ALL writing as list.