
Regular readers of this blog will know that I love ‘coins on the palm of the hand pictures’, simply because I can hone up on my fortune telling abilities. The hand is always in focus and the lines pin-sharp. Doesn’t matter about the teeny blurred coin.
A couple of years ago I published what follows. I was reminded by my Texas buddy and doppelgänger Dick Stout, Keeper of Blog Standards, who had enjoyed the post. It also gives me a great cop-out by repeating scribblings you’ve seen before.
LISTICLES
You may not recognise the word, but I’m sure that you will recognise the genre
10 celebrities who have aged badly; 20 ways to insult someone without cursing; 15 signs that you are not a nice person, or 10 things to make out of a discarded Garrett probe boxes’.
You get the gist; the world seems to have gone list crazy. But it makes for lazy writing … and easier to do a blog post, of course! Not only that, listicles suit hard-pressed writers and time-poor readers. At the end of the day it’s a win-win situation, innit?
With this in mind, I have been looking closely at the listicles that regularly frequent newspapers, magazines and the Web. For those who don’t know, the word is made up of ‘list’ and ‘article’. Followers of Lewis Carroll will recognise the form as a ‘portmanteau’ word. The Oxford Dictionary defines the word as ‘an article that takes the form of a numbered or bullet-pointed list.’
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