Writing Lists: Part 1

There are basically two types of written lists: horizontal lists and vertical lists. Many people have questions about capitalizing and punctuating lists. 

Here is a horizontal list:

These are the ingredients for the cake: flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, cocoa, oil, and cinnamon.

Here is a vertical list:

These are the ingredients for the cake:

     flour
     sugar
     eggs
     baking powder
     cocoa
     oil
     cinnamon

Does it matter whether you use a vertical list or a horizontal list? No. However, in this case, where you have a single word as a list item and no particular order to the list items, a horizontal list makes sense — and saves a lot of space.

The one thing that sometimes trips people up with horizontal lists like the one above is the punctuation. Look at this similar “list” of the same items:

The ingredients for the cake are flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, cocoa, oil, and cinnamon.

Note that there is no colon in this list. It is different from the first list:

1. These are the ingredients for the cake: flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, cocoa, oil, and cinnamon.
2. The ingredients for the cake are flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, cocoa, oil, and cinnamon.

In list 1, cake ends a sentence, so you use a colon before the list items.  These are the ingredients for the cake is a complete sentence.

In list 2, the ingredients for the cake are is not a sentence; the list of items completes the sentence, so you use no colon.

In other words: Don’t use the colon after a verb (are is a verb in list 2).

It doesn’t matter at all which way you want to write that list. Just know when the colon would be incorrect. As far as the Oxford comma before and cinnamon, well, that is up to you, but I would use it. 

Although it is important in horizontal lists, parallelism of list items is even more important in a vertical list where you are likely to have longer list items.  Parallelism in list items simply means that all your list items are of the same grammatical structure. If one item in your list is a complete sentence, all items should be complete sentences. If one item is a phrase, all items should be phrases. And they should all be structured the same way.

Here is a vertical list that is not parallel:

These items will be discussed at the meeting:

     Raises

     Layoffs

     Ad campaigns

     Whether or not we will have a Christmas party

The last item is a clause. Christmas party would be parallel to the rest of the items. 

Here is another vertical list that is not parallel:

Here are some ideas I have for our vacation:

1. We will visit the zoo.
2. We will hike through the canyon.
3. We will rent bicycles and ride through the countryside.
4. Eating out at five-star restaurants is fun too. 

Once again, the last item is not parallel with the others. Although the items are all complete sentences, the last one is not structured the same way and doesn’t seem to fit. 

Here is another list that is not parallel:

Here are some ideas I have for our vacation:

1. visiting the zoo
2. hiking through the canyon
3. a bicycle ride through the countryside
4. eating out at five-star restaurants

This time item #3 is written in a different structure. It’s not too bad, but it still is not parallel (riding a bicycle through the countryside).

And here is a horizontal list that isn’t parallel:

We need someone to hang the decorations, pick up the cake, set up the chairs, and pouring the drinks. 

What about numbers versus bullets? You don’t need numbers or bullets. You can just indent your items to make them stand out. Bullets are always fine too. Numbers are preferable when your list items need to be in a certain order, or when the number of items is significant (for example, if your lead-n sentence is Five Things to Do in Paris). 

Next week will be the annual Thanksgiving post (even if we are a day or two late). In two weeks, watch for Lists Part 2, which will include the punctuation and capitalization of lists.

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Grammar Diva News

As I mentioned before, I am participating in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, the goal of which is to write a 50,000 word novel (or 50,000 words of a longer novel) in the month of November. I am actually writing a memoir, so I am called a Nano Rebel, but that’s okay! I am now up to over 34,000 words.  Because I am writing so fast, the draft manuscript will need a lot of work! However, I will be putting the book up for pre-sale on Kindle and other online readers (you can’t offer pre-sales on Amazon for paperbacks) probably next week. I promise you a good read. I am aiming for May 1, 2019, release date.