September 2009I bet you the current issue of Cosmopolitan has an articlewhose title begins with a number. "7 Things He Won't Tell You aboutSex," or something like that. Some popular magazinesfeature articles of this type on the cover of everyissue. That can't be happening by accident. Editors must knowthey attract readers.Why do readers like the list of n things so much? Mainly becauseit's easier to read than a regular article. [1]Structurally, the list of n things is a degenerate case of essay.An essay can go anywhere the writer wants. In a list of n thingsthe writer agrees to constrain himself to a collection of pointsof roughly equal importance, and he tells the reader explicitlywhat they are.Some of the work of reading an article is understanding itsstructure—figuring out what in high school we'd have calledits "outline." Not explicitly, of course, but someone who reallyunderstands an article probably has something in his brain afterwardthat corresponds to such an outline. In a list of n things, thiswork is done for you. Its structure is an exoskeleton.As well as being explicit, the structure is guaranteed to be of thesimplest possible type: a few main points with few to no subordinateones, and no particular connection between them.Because the main points are unconnected, the list of n things israndom access. There's no thread of reasoning you have to follow. You couldread the list in any order. And because the points are independentof one another, they work like watertight compartments in anunsinkable ship. If you get bored with, or can't understand, ordon't agree with one point, you don't have to give up on the article.You can just abandon that one and skip to the next. A list of nthings is parallel and therefore fault tolerant.There are times when this format is what a writer wants. One, obviously,is when what you have to say actually is a list of nthings. I once wrote an essay about the mistakes that kill startups, and a few people made fun of mefor writing something whose title began with a number. But in thatcase I really was trying to make a complete catalog of a number ofindependent things. In fact, one of the questions I was trying toanswer was how many there were.There are other less legitimate reasons for using this format. Forexample, I use it when I get close to a deadline. If I have togive a talk and I haven't started it a few days beforehand, I'llsometimes play it safe and make the talk a list of n things.The list of n things is easier for writers as well as readers. Whenyou're writing a real essay, there's always a chance you'll hit adead end. A real essay is a train of thought, and some trains ofthought just peter out. That's an alarming possibility when youhave to give a talk in a few days. What if you run out of ideas?The compartmentalized structure of the list of n things protectsthe writer from his own stupidity in much the same way it protectsthe reader. If you run out of ideas on one point, no problem: itwon't kill the essay. You can take out the whole point if you needto, and the essay will still survive.Writing a list of n things is so relaxing. You think of n/2 ofthem in the first 5 minutes. So bang, there's the structure, andyou just have to fill it in. As you think of more points, you justadd them to the end. Maybe you take out or rearrange or combine afew, but at every stage you have a valid (though initially low-res)list of n things. It's like the sort of programming where you writea version 1 very quickly and then gradually modify it, but at everypoint have working code—or the style of painting where you beginwith a complete but very blurry sketch done in an hour, then spenda week cranking up the resolution.Because the list of n things is easier for writers too, it's notalways a damning sign when readers prefer it. It's not necessarilyevidence readers are lazy; it could also mean they don't havemuch confidence in the writer. The list of n things is in thatrespect the cheeseburger of essay forms. If you're eating at arestaurant you suspect is bad, your best bet is to order thecheeseburger. Even a bad cook can make a decent cheeseburger. Andthere are pretty strict conventions about what a cheeseburger shouldlook like. You can assume the cook isn't going to try somethingweird and artistic. The list of n things similarly limits thedamage that can be done by a bad writer. You know it's going tobe about whatever the title says, and the format prevents the writerfrom indulging in any flights of fancy.Because the list of n things is the easiest essay form, it shouldbe a good one for beginning writers. And in fact it is what mostbeginning writers are taught. The classic 5 paragraph essay isreally a list of n things for n = 3. But the students writing themdon't realize they're using the same structure as the articles theyread in Cosmopolitan. They're not allowed to include the numbers,and they're expected to spackle over the gaps with gratuitoustransitions ("Furthermore...") and cap the thing at either end withintroductory and concluding paragraphs so it will look superficiallylike a real essay.[2]It seems a fine plan to start students off with the list of n things.It's the easiest form. But if we're going to do that, why not doit openly? Let them write lists of n things like the pros, withnumbers and no transitions or "conclusion."There is one case where the list of n things is a dishonest format:when you use it to attract attention by falsely claiming the listis an exhaustive one. I.e. if you write an article that purportsto be about the 7 secrets of success. That kind of title is thesame sort of reflexive challenge as a whodunit. You have to at leastlook at the article to check whether they're the same 7 you'd list.Are you overlooking one of the secrets of success? Better check.It's fine to put "The" before the number if you really believeyou've made an exhaustive list. But evidence suggests most thingswith titles like this are linkbait.The greatest weakness of the list of n things is that there's solittle room for new thought. The main point of essay writing, whendone right, is the new ideas you have while doing it. A real essay,as the name implies, is dynamic: you don't know what you're goingto write when you start. It will be about whatever you discoverin the course of writing it.This can only happen in a very limited way in a list of n things.You make the title first, and that's what it's going to be about.You can't have more new ideas in the writing than will fit in thewatertight compartments you set up initially. And your brain seemsto know this: because you don't have room for new ideas, you don'thave them.Another advantage of admitting to beginning writers that the 5paragraph essay is really a list of n things is that we can warnthem about this. It only lets you experience the definingcharacteristic of essay writing on a small scale: in thoughts of asentence or two. And it's particularly dangerous that the 5 paragraphessay buries the list of n things within something that looks likea more sophisticated type of essay. If you don't know you're usingthis form, you don't know you need to escape it.Notes[1]Articles of this type are also startlingly popular on Delicious,but I think that's because delicious/popular is driven by bookmarking,not because Delicious users are stupid. Delicious users arecollectors, and a list of n things seems particularly collectiblebecause it's a collection itself.[2]Most "word problems" in school math textbooks are similarlymisleading. They look superficially like the application of mathto real problems, but they're not. So if anything they reinforcethe impression that math is merely a complicated but pointlesscollection of stuff to be memorized.
