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The List of N Things

paulgraham.com · 1,465 words · saved by 1 readers

September 2009 I bet you the current issue of Cosmopolitan has an article whose title begins with a number. "7 Things He Won't Tell You about Sex," or something like that. Some popular magazines feature articles of this type on the cover of every issue. That can't be happening by accident. Editors must know they attract readers. Why do readers like the list of n things so much? Mainly because it'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 things the writer agrees to constrain himself to a collection of points of roughly equal importance, and he tells the reader explicitly what they are. Some of the work of reading an article is understanding its structure—figuring out what in high school we'd have called its "outline." Not explicitly, of course, but someone who really understands an article probably has something in his brain afterward that corresponds

The List of N Things --> September 2009 I bet you the current issue of Cosmopolitan has an article whose title begins with a number. "7 Things He Won't Tell You about Sex," or something like that. Some popular magazines feature articles of this type on the cover of every issue. That can't be happening by accident. Editors must know they attract readers. Why do readers like the list of n things so much? Mainly because it'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 thing

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