Knowing how to use lists well in documents can make all the difference to your writing's success.

Reading time: 4 minutes | By Lee Ellwood

---

There are lots of reasons for using lists in documents, but the secret is to use them well. A quick scribble will do fine for Christmas shopping, New Year’s resolutions and coffee orders, but for documents intended to make an impact, poorly constructed, formatted and located lists can set you right back.

Why lists matter in impact writing

Lists look pretty, the little text-breaker-uppers that they are. But here’s why you should pay attention to the way you’re using lists in documents. Sure, they give the eyes somewhere to rest on the page, but they do much more than that for your audience—and your communication success.

• Readers are busy, so they skim text, and lists make your information scannable and easier to access.
• Lists can foreground key information by making it stand out among a flood of words.
• Lists can establish an order of steps to be followed or a hierarchy in the information to be absorbed.
• Lists can highlight the relationships between pieces of information.

If you’re in impact reporting, research, opinion writing and content for social good, it’s vital that your writing engages your target audience every time. If the funding assessor or donor or program partner can’t quickly grasp what you’re trying to say, you could lose their attention in seconds.

In short, lists can make it easy for people to say ‘yes’ to your document.

(By the way, that list is a sentence list. Each item is a full sentence, so it takes an initial capital and a final full stop. It may or may not have an introduction in the preceding paragraph.)

What goes wrong with lists in documents?

We’ve seen a lot of lists over the years, and they haven’t all been effective. As a result of poor list construction, the information has been disjointed and hard to follow, or the chosen punctuation and list item structure has been distracting and confusing. The problem here is that readers disengage.

Some of the common issues with lists include:

• list items with varying structures in the one list (distracting)
• list items that are too long, or a mixture of lengths (confusing)
• list items in an illogical order (disconnecting)
• inconsistent list styling across the document (confusing and unprofessional)
• overuse of punctuation (unclear and distracting)
• overuse of lists (narrative-breaking).

Lots of list writers don’t ensure parallel structure of items in a list, and this causes problems in the document. ‘Parallel structure’ means that every item in the list follows the same syntactic pattern. Because humans like patterns, parallel structure helps readers extract your meaning more quickly and easily. For example, our list items are all noun phrases.

(As an aside, that list is a fragment list: each item is a piece of a sentence, not a complete one. Fragment lists have a lead-in sentence or phrase—‘Some of the common issues with lists include:’—and no punctuation after list items except the final one.)

How to write a good bullet list

The Australian Government Style Manual offers a clear, step-by-step to the principles of well-constructed and consistently formatted lists in documents. The guide covers capitalisation in lists, how to write a good bullet list, the differences between numbered and bulleted lists, and how to punctuate a list correctly.

Here are some of the key principles we follow at EllWords for using lists in a document.

• Ensure parallel structure of items, so that all are consistent in tense, sentence type or word class within that list.
• Minimise punctuation use and conjunctions—semicolons aren’t needed at the end of items, and you can skip the joining ‘and’, as well. (Except in legal contexts, where it really matters.)
• Make sure the list serves a purpose and hasn’t been thrown in to break up the page. It should outline a genuine series of examples, options, key points or steps.
• Apply numbering when the order of the items matters—as in a sequence of steps or instructions, for example. If the order doesn’t matter, use a bullet list.
• Check that lists are scattered among paragraphs, not replacing them. A list should complement the way you present the more detailed information.

We recommend that writers don’t worry too much about the formatting details of their lists when they’re compiling their documents—just get the ideas and information flowing. Then, examine your lists closely during the editing and refining stage, when you can approach the text more critically.

One more list type …

• A standalone list
• Initial capital, like headings
• No full stops—not sentences
• E.g. shopping lists, brain dumps

Using lists in documents—for good

How does your list-writing shape up? The key thing is to be aware of the effect poor lists have on your document and the points (no pun intended!) to watch out for. Following our tips (and the AGSM) will have your lists performing for you in no time.

However, tidying up lists is one common aspect of our editing and writing work in impact reporting, research and legal writing, and long-form content. If you have a great document that’s almost ready to go and time’s running out, why not contact us for a final pre-distribution check and make sure your lists are carrying their weight?