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Lists are a series of words, phrases or names that are grouped together for a reason.

This technique should be familiar to you as you will have studied it at 3rd level. Use this guide to revise and check your understanding.

A list connects words, items or names together in a meaningful way.

Vertical lists

Practical or factual lists (like a shopping list or a to-do list) are usually written vertically. They can often be shown using numbers, letters or bullet points. The information should be presented to the reader in a way that is easy to understand and doesn't interrupt the flow.

• chickens
• pigs
• sheep
• cows

1. Wash the dishes
2. Take the dog for a walk
3. Finish homework
4. Phone Gran

Horizontal lists

Horizontal lists are separated using commas and usually feature 'and' or 'or' before the last item: 'chickens, pigs, sheep and cows.'

Example from poetry

Lists can often be used to emphasise a point. In Jackie Kay's poem Old Tongue she lists the words the speaker had to stop using when they moved to England as a child: 'eedyit, dreich, wabbit, crabbit, stummer, teuchter, heidbanger'

This list draws attention to all the different Scots words the speaker once used. If Jackie Kay had only mentioned one or two words, do you think it would have had the same effect as a longer list? Probably not! The longer list emphasises the scale of the speaker's loss.

Example from fiction

In Charles Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol, the main character, the miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge, is visited by four ghosts. The last of these, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, shows Scrooge a nightmare-like vision of the future that will come about unless Scrooge mends his ways.

At one point Dickens describes the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come taking Scrooge to a city slum and a pawn shop where "iron, old rags, bottles, bones and greasy offal were brought. Upon the floor within were piled heaps of rusty nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights and refuse of all kind.”

Charles Dickens was fond of using lists in his writing. Here, he uses a list to build atmosphere and give the reader a sense of the pawn shop as being a place of dirt, decay and despair.