[0]https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/pi/2016_2017/phil/...
A written list can be read in any order. You can go back and re-read previous items, and then go into the future and see what the conclusions from the current items are, and so on. This free-form temporal flow of any writing (including lists) is a very powerful tool of reasoning. Arguably, this property of writing is what leads to an intellectual explosion once a people learns how to write.
In a PowerPoint presentation, the temporal order is fixed. And humans have a tendency to infer causality based on order. So with a PowerPoint presentation, you can (more easily) convince someone of invalid conclusions of logic because you control the post hoc ergo propter hoc.
So, I guess, all of this to say: writing lists good. PowerPointing lists bad.
I think the salient argument is his argument that the CONTENT should drive the presentation style. Lists are good for some stuff, but not everything.
Sometimes the presenter talks about each item, giving meaningful detail while the structure is there on the screen. But it means that someone reading the slides alone misses the detail. Someone not listening carefully misses it too.
In written work, the headings are just headings. The paragraphs under the headings are the content. You can write transitions, too.
Anyway here's where this battle is really raging right now: on my resume. For years I've been distilling things down to action-oriented bullet points with dots, because I heard the Deputy likes dots.[0] Then I got an eyeful of someone else's resume that instead had articulate paragraphs intended to be read by, you know, a calm human being with some dignity and self-respect, and immediately felt like that was way better. But I dunno.....
In the GP comment I advocated reading Tufte's critique of bulleted lists, but resumes are definitely a place where they significantly increase the odds the initial screeners can spot the things they want to see to advance your resume. A well structured list written using parallel construction (similar grammatical structure from one bullet to the next) is far far faster for a reader to parse. Once you've been told they want to interview you, you're generally free to submit an "updated" resume if you want to, which can be in prose format if you think that's best (but again not all interviewers will look at your resume more than a few seconds before they jump into the zoom session with you).
Basically, reading is much faster than listening, so I would like to not waste your time in the interview getting to know things that you already told me through a faster, asynchronous medium.
BUT. But. A bunch of places that I have worked at also have a process by which a non-technical person pre-processes your resume before handing it to me. They are looking to see whether you have checked the boxes. IDK what boxes, it depends on what those folks are taking out of the posting. It probably helps if you have a section of buzzwords so that they can say “they say they have React experience, I can check the React box!” For me most of those criteria are fungible, but you have to put something for the HR folks to screen out half the applications.
Now, the interview is where it gets a bit trickier. I used to have a great approach to this, when I worked at smaller companies and had more say in the hiring process. That was just, “your resume is a claim that you are a certain sort of person, my interview just tests whether you are who you say you are, are you faking it or are you selling yourself short?” In other words if you say you managed your coworkers I want to devote 15 minutes to see what sort of manager you are, even for a non-management role.
But, now I work at a Big Tech company and I don't really have that freedom... Now when I am interviewing you, I have usually been asked to either assess culture fit or technical chops... If technical chops, I am usually not tailoring my questions too closely to your resume, but to the forms that I have to fill out after the interview. The actual programming exercise will usually be amorphous, the actual work will be simple but the scope will be unbounded relative to the interview length—and so I am not expecting you to complete it so much as to parcel it up into smaller workable chunks and execute on one or two of those. Based on how you do this I can usually give decent feedback on my forms without feeling like I have fed you a trick question.
All of the examples are clearly written in paragraph form, but there are nice, big section headers that would clearly delineate the subtopics within the example.
In other words, the title is misleading. A more accurate title might be: "I learned to stop worrying and give all my essays clear sub-headings".
To further improve the title: "The advantages of list structure on most writings".
You don't need to weigh yourself down with the responsibility to prevent a catastrophic misunderstanding among rocket scientists.
Anything that makes me pause while reading code or a comment is something I’ll strive in a timeboxed manner to simplify.
It’s not always possible, but my code doesn’t get a lot of style comments or comments about readability anymore so seems to be working.
Nit: PowerPoint didn't even exist when Challenger exploded (o-ring failure), you must be referring to Columbia (heat-shield failure).
> Richard Feynman had also experienced the bullet-outline format style of NASA in his service on the commission that investigated the first shuttle accident, the Challenger in 1986. Feynman wrote:
>> Then we learned about "bullets"—little black circles in front of phrases that were supposed to summarize things. There was one after another of these little goddamn bullets in our briefing books and on slides.
but Columbia is discussed in much more depth.
And to be clear, re lists/bullets, Tufte's complaint was about 4+ levels of nested bullets:
> At the same time, lower-level NASA engineers were writing about the possible danger to the Columbia in several hundred e-mails (with the Boeing reports in PP format sometimes attached). The text of 90% of these e-mails simply used paragraphs and sentences; 10% used bullet lists with 2 or 3 levels. That is, the engineers were able to reason about the issues without employing the multi-level hierarchical outlines of the original PP pitches.
It's like saying variable font sizes are inherently bad because due to them, contracts can have small print sections.
You can see some of Tufte’s recommendations for formatting lists here https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...
I would do them in a text editor, one thought per line. The beauty of using a text editor is the shortcut keys that make it easy to move items up/down in the list. This is really nice as the outline develops and you build the plot and connecting tissue that ties the ideas together -- it's easy to play with different narratives in a text editor.
I showed this method to a friend who is a NYT best selling author. He doesn't know a lick of code, but uses a text editor in his process now too.
I actually do all of my writing in a text editor that doesn't have any spelling or grammar checking. This helps me stay focused on the ideas and think about editing later. My very last step of editing is moving the text into a word processor to catch spelling and grammatical errors that I may have missed.
Anyway, I share this in case anyone else finds it useful. If someone has a process that works really well for them, I'd love to hear about it too!
Could you elaborate on your process for outlining? What level of detail do you go into? Do you nest bullets or stick to one top-level list? Do you try to lay out the substance of your argument?
I’d be interested in reading anything you’d recommend on the subject, too. Always appreciate hearing from people who do this on the daily.
In that sense, listicles (as they are known) are a suboptimal/locally optimal solution to the lack of trust readers have, which was engendered by too much bad writing out there. Readers have learned to mistrust long articles that aren't obvious at a glance about the value they will provide.
The traditional humanities teach appreciation of their own form of connective tissue, so to speak. Business writing arguably can be learned more quickly and emphasizes getting to the point.
And, I also think this is not an either_or situation, text can be locally structured by outline method, and then at other places marked by nonlinear growth, or progressing by lists. And these domains can overlap, and be of different sizes. Nor do I think there are only these three methods. Text can accommodate vastly different approaches.
To me, a list consists of bullet points, each of which is no more than 1 sentence. It's not prose as such. I'd also assume that the list might be hierarchically nested.
The article seems to be discussing listicles (or list articles): effectively a series of very short essays that parallel each other, making the same point from a different angle each time, or comparing and contrasting a series of subjects. It's a suitable form if that's the over-all point you're trying to make.
Mainly the article extolls the virtues of organising prose into relatively-short sections, each with a clear heading. I agree this makes prose more readable, but I don't think that's an uncommon opinion.
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
* Pros:
* starts as a list
* gradual enhancement
\* interior items lead to excessive depth
* loses horizontal space
* crashes space shuttles
Interesting:
* This is a metalist.
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.
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...
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.