Lists are informal things. They’re scrawled on bits of torn paper, inscribed on the palm of a hand with a ballpoint pen, scratched inside a paperback novel. They involve the nitty-gritties of life: food, must-dos, dates which - if forgotten - will cause chaos.
When lists are used in formal writing, they must be… formalised. Think about some of these things when using a list:
- use full sentences and proper sentence structure
- use formal punctuation (check the rules for using commas and colons and conjunctions)
- check your parallelism; if you have stated something must be done in 5 steps, then number the steps 1 through 5, not a) through e). (Although, if one step has several parts, you can use letters to identify the sub-steps e.g. Step 3 a), Step 3 b) )
- don’t use bullets
It’s best to avoid lists which are physically separated from the body of the writing. (The above list is highly informal). If you can swing it, write a list as full sentences within a paragraph. This is a good time to see how interesting you can make a boring list; use your linguistic abilities.
Tags: lists, punctuation, writing style