

The List of N Things - djm
http://www.paulgraham.com/nthings.html

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tptacek
Lists are just writing devices. There are lots of other writing devices, and
they all serve the same purpose: as scaffolding for building up ideas and
communicating effectively. Some of the popular ones:

* Socratic dialog (ie, the openings of G.E.B. chapters)

* Extended metaphor (ie, mechanical_fish's zoo comment)

* Anthopomorphism (ie, Gruber's adventures of the washed-up brushed metal theme)

* F.A.Q.

* Narrative (ie, Ivan Krstic's Porsche story --- which, again, who knew Ivan had that in him? Wow!)

And my point is just, all these devices can be abused, and all of them can
serve a purpose. There's no profound reason Top-N is popular; the reason it's
there is straightforward: every "how to have a popular blog" post lists it as
a key technique for engaging A.D.D. Internet readers.

~~~
fjabre
The 3 Reasons I agree with tptacek's statement:

1\. It puts everything in perspective. After all, essay is just another one of
several devices to convey a point through writing.

2\. He clearly states that any one of these devices can be abused. Surely
anyone can write a crappy and spam-filled essay with a catchy title just as
they can do so with a list.

3\. Clearly many people surfing the Internet do have A.D.D. Perhaps the cause
is the Internet itself but it doesn't matter, the end result is the same -
namely, reading material for A.D.D. Internet users is in high demand.

EOL

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randallsquared
> You think of n/2 of them in the first 5 minutes.

The word that leaps to mind here is "half". :)

~~~
izaidi
Why use four characters when you can use three?

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abstractbill
Every equation included in an essay will halve its readership? ;-)

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kabuks
Final readership = Original Readership / (2 * Equations)

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byrneseyeview
No, 2^equations.

~~~
Confusion
Yes, more power to equations.

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cperciva
I think PG is missing something in his comparison of "list of N things" to
"beginner" 5-paragraph essays: Cohesion matters.

Even if they cover the same points, a good essay is far more informative than
a "list of N things" article / powerpoint presenation: An essay has to tie the
points together, pointing out the connections and drawing conclusions. When I
was in school, my English teachers often returned essays (but not mine!) to
students with "a list is not an essay" (or similar words) written in red ink.

Sure, poorly written essays, in the limiting case, end up being simply a list
of disconnected statements -- but students are asked to write essays in order
to develop their ability to write cohesive essays, not in order to demonstrate
their knowledge of the underlying facts, so PG's suggestion to 'let them write
lists of n things like the pros, with numbers and no transitions or
"conclusion"' utterly misses the point.

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sachinag
Essays are planned; papers are stream-of-consciousness. Readers can't follow
the internal machinations of a particular writer's psyche; while you can have
a revelatory essay, you still need to plan it.

My best example: Woolf reads like stream of consciousness, but she was a
meticulous planner: she obsessed over every word - her daily output was a mere
75-150 words.

~~~
tptacek
I think it's the opposite, isn't it? Essays are "tentative"; they're a written
document of the writer's grappling with their subject, which is why you get so
many ideas while writing them.

~~~
sachinag
I think that's only sometimes true. There are a number of well-written
proscriptive essays where the author chooses to ignore paths that proved
fruitless during her time drafting the essay. Furthermore, even personal
essays can leave out sidebars that prove to be meaningless distractions. If I
used Etherpad, I'm sure I'd write three times as many words as there are in
the finished product; I remove more than I write, and I think that's the case
for most people who take the craft seriously (regardless of skill, of which I
have little beyond passion).

On the _process_ of writing, however, you're spot on.

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ankeshk
I remember Guy Kawasaki saying he tries to follow this list of N things tactic
for all his speeches so that people don't have a problem of following him.
They won't doze off.

Two other quick formats of writing essays:

1.

"The secrets of telling a story well are three:

i. How to end

ii. Where to begin

iii. What to leave out."

\- Roy H. Williams.

In that order. Determine the end first. And you can take your readers on to a
journey. Surprise and delight them by connecting seemingly unrelated stories.
Malcolm Gladwell uses this format very well.

2.

Another format is answering 3 questions:

i. What is the problem?

ii. Why is it the problem?

iii. How to solve it?

Makes writing easier, quicker and more comprehensive.

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jamesbritt
"I remember Guy Kawasaki saying he tries to follow this list of N things
tactic for all his speeches"

It helps the audience judge about how long something will be going on for.
With print, you don't need that, since you can see the length of the piece in
advance.

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joez
My favorite is when N is a nice round number like 25, 50, 100 or 101. What is
the likelyhood that the exhaustive list ends up being such a marketable
number? Must be very low. So I always wonder what was omitted or, more likely,
what pork was added to get to the round number.

~~~
kabuks
I actually tend to trust non-round numbers. Like 9, or 17. It indicates to me
that author didn't try to fit the ideas to a number, but actually thought
things through and came up with the number after the essay was written

~~~
byrneseyeview
That's why, when I write an article like this, I pick a number like that.

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djm
You seem to be leaning towards the idea that these list type articles are
inferior to the essay format. When reading an article I consider the clarity
with which the author has expressed himself to be most important - if he can
express ideas more clearly in a list than otherwise then I am all for it.

I do tend to think this format is abused when people wish to write quick and
dirty articles online though. For me, an article titled 'N things...' tends to
be reason enough to ignore it in most cases.

Also, I will admit to preferring the essay format overall. You cannot lose
yourself in a list like you can in a good essay regardless of how good the
content is. An essay is more like a story which sucks you in.

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riffer
The insight that readers like knowing that writers have agreed to be
constrained is a great one. Witness Twitter.

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10ren
This is a charming little essay. But why?

\- The "exoskeleton" metaphor for an N-list having its skeletal structure on
the outside made me smile.

\- I like the explanation of N-lists having a flat structure. Clean modules,
with no dependencies. If your code can naturally fit this structure, it will
be simpler. Alan Kay says that by inventing new _representations_ , we make
their users more intelligent (e.g. multiplication with Roman v.s. Arabic
numerals). If your new representation enables its user to think in flat terms
about what previously required nested or recursive structures, then you have
done something great.

\- These are playful and novel ways of looking at commonplace things. They
evoke my conviction that gold is all around us; just a step or two off the
path is something incredible. All you need do is look.

But underlying all this is the lack of any discernible ulterior motive: it's
just for fun. :-)

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fjabre
While PG makes some good points it sounds a little bit like why to read
Shakespeare instead of Poe.

I happen to like both. Although I might add the list of N things does get
abused more often.

I think using Cosmopolitan as an example and/or relegating the N-List format
to newbie writers takes it a bit far.

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10ren
I just noticed that I have an implicit conviction that pg's essays are
entirely written for us, that the comments here are their beginning and their
end - their entire purpose.

I don't know if it's true; not that pg intends it, nor that that is how they
are received. I have a strong sense that it is, without evidence.

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pingswept
I don't know-- I've eaten some pretty bad cheeseburgers at good restaurants.

~~~
jokull
I live in London and these Brits cannot make an honest, decent hamburger. The
good ones are ones in fancy dress. The simple ones are dry meatballs of a pale
sickly color. They've got a nice sandwich chain called Pret a Manger that make
consistently good food however. And a very strong café americano.

~~~
movix
Timeline from live chicken to Pret a Manger Chicken Wrap? Live, dead, cooked,
chopped, wrapped = 55 minutes

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BRadmin
"...the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html>

~~~
byrneseyeview
The beginning of that sentence is: "Inc recently asked me who I thought
were..."

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billswift
"The list of n things similarly limits the damage that can be done by a bad
writer."

I have more things I want to do than I have time to do them; why in the world
would I waste time reading something if I expected it to be by a bad writer? I
have quit reading writers before when I came across strong evidence of bias or
incompetence in their writings.

~~~
whatusername
A bad writer does not bad ideas make!

~~~
billswift
Not necessarily, but the converse IS true, bad ideas make a bad writer no
matter how easy to read or entertaining he may be.

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kwamenum86
Regarding making explicitly numbered lists of n things in school, I am pretty
sure thy do that in the lower grades, although not in essay form. For example,
children have to write "5 things I learned about x" or "5 things I like about
y" and are graded on relevancy and sometimes persuasiveness...if I am
remembering correctly anyway.

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anigbrowl
Irrelevant, but too good to pass up with Paul's title:
[http://webspace.webring.com/people/fc/churud_geo/cyberiadn.h...](http://webspace.webring.com/people/fc/churud_geo/cyberiadn.html)
...a short bit of sci-fi for your reading pleasure.

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wglb
A nice way of suggesting what I have felt, and that such articles are quite
often hastily prepared. Most importantly, how do we as readers have any
confidence that an article titled "The 7 ..." is really inclusive or even
instructive?

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JBiserkov
How to make a _list of n elements_?

    
    
      (defun list-of (n elt)
        (if (zerop n)
            nil
            (cons elt (list-of (- n 1) elt))))
    

ANSI Common Lisp, Paul Graham, page 38

1996 by Prentice Hall

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bcl
This article may have held my attention longer if it had been a list. It lost
me after the 7th paragraph when I realized he was going to continue to ramble
on about lists. So I skipped to the final paragraph just to be sure.

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caa09hh
I really find that to be true all the time. I would much rather click on a
list of n things rather than an article about the same topic.

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andreyf
Sorry for nitpicking, but first sentence should be _I'll bet you_ , not _I bet
you_.

~~~
abstractbill
I think the "I'll bet you..." form is more standard in the US, but saying "I
bet you..." is definitely acceptable, and in my experience is actually much
more common in some other English-speaking countries (e.g. England itself).

~~~
andreyf
That's strange. I can't find a single example online where "you" isn't the
subject of the bet (for example, I bet you look good on the dance floor).

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Dilpil
I wonder if this article will be a huge hit on digg?

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yan
That protocol is cracked.com's livelihood.

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sayrer
They're called listicles.

