Legal Writing

"L" Is for Lists

By Stephens

Lists can make text items easy to read. Lists are a visual way to focus information. Review your draft for suitable lists embedded in the text.

The standard rule is that the items listed must be similar in nature, parallel in grammatical form and of equal importance.

In plain language writing, we ought to be a flexible about that rule. You?ll know the occasion for flexibility when you see it.

Another standard rule: Lists should include at least 3 items and not more than 7.
This is because people remember things better in groups of 3 and with more than 7 items on the list focus is lost.

But my experience tells me that an occasional list of two items works okay. And that I never want more than 5 items on my lists, because far fewer people can process, remember, and use 6 and 7 items than can handle 5.

Gregg?s Reference Manual, favoured by many professionals in the plain language field, suggests the question of punctuation of the introductory material is important. It seems you only need a colon if the introductory material forms a complete sentence that you could punctuate with a period.

In this world, few people understand the differences, and will wonder why some lists are preceded by a colon and others are not. I throw a colon at all of them.

Use these formatting options to set lists off from text:
· spacing to establish a separate unit
· indentation, at the left only or both left and right
· numerical or alphabetic listing where you want to prioritize the items
· bullets or special characters where there is no priority
· double column format for long lists of short items

Full post as published by Building Rapport on April 08, 2008 (boomark / email).