The Top Ten Reasons Why I Hate Numbered Lists

I'm afraid that, as a society, we are in danger of enumerating the well-written article out of existence.

Here's a sample of headlines from newsletters I've received in the last couple of weeks:

• The 7 Rules of Picking Names for Fictional Characters
• The 3 Worst Mistakes You Can Make When Remodeling Your Kitchen
• 5 Tips for Writing Historical Fiction
• The Top 3 Tools for Securing Your Business Network
• 6 Attacks That Can Bring Your Website to Its Knees

At the turn of the 21^st Century, when lists of facts were needed, bullet points were the norm and no one bothered to count them. The boss would just call and say, “Give me a few bullets on re-organizing purchasing.” But in the last couple of years, writers seem to have ran out of bullets and started slamming numbers into the breach.

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I've always been a sucker for top 10 lists – best selling movies, books, songs, cars, best dressed, best restaurants, richest people, even for the worst best and worst opening lines (for a book or a singles bar).

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But in our nothing-succeeds-like-excess world, enumerations are running amok. The explosion of enumerated list may seem like a harmless fad, but I fear it may be a symptom of the spread of social Darwinism. Bullet points are unordered lists. Though they read top to bottom, they are basically a collection of equals. Putting a number in front of a list item implies ranking – winners and losers; and selectivity – only the top X items made the list, the rest don't even get a participation ribbon.

When I saw the headline: “7 Ways Splunk Improves Visibility in Virtual Environments” (I'm not making that up), I started wondering how the author settled on a list of seven. It's an unusual number to stop on. Three, five, ten or twelve items seem normal. My suspicion is that the eighth thing Splunk did was too embarrassing to include – like maybe the eighth way Splunk calls attention to your virtual environment is by unleashing a loud, malodorous fart when someone gets near it.

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The numbered list has become a sorry, tired cliché. Please, editors, give it up. Try commissioning a few articles with an inverted pyramid structure, smooth transitions and arguments that build on each other.

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Like all Crocs and Beanie Babies, this fad will fade away eventually. I think I may have seen a harbinger of its decline this week when I received an emailed newsletter from Writers Digest bearing the unselfconsciously ironic subject line “12 Clichés all Writers Should Avoid.”

I'm hoping that the number one item on that list is: “Avoid numbered lists like the plague.”