Saturday, August 26th, 2006...9:28 am by Leroy Brown
How long should my list be?
Most lists that you find online are 10, 20, even 50 items long. In other words, they’re a nice, round number. It’s as if the writer decided before beginning the post, how long it should be.
When I write a list post, I title it this way :
X ways to do ……….. or
X best …………
I write the title with the X there purposely. If I write 7 items and I can’t think of 3 more useful ones, then I change the X to 7. I don’t want to dilute the effect and quality of my list by using filler items. So to answer the original question, How long should my list be?
Just as long as it needs to be, and not 1 item longer.
4 Comments
August 26th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Most people’s attention spans probably don’t exceed 10 or so line items, would be my guess.
August 26th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Good point Darren. No point in writing a 37 item list if the readers get bored after #10.
August 28th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
What I have seen is they will title a page “250 great books” and build up to 250. I thought that was interesting. Not necessarily interesting enough to look through, but interesting enough..
August 29th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Jason,
I can honestly say I’d fall asleep trying to read a 250 item long list - yikes!
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