What are Listicles?

A Little About the Traditions of the So List Blog

Does this blog have something that could be considered traditions? Perhaps. Here are some of them:

1. Digging into the origin of the words used and not finding it.
2. Digging deeper into this question than famous world dictionaries.
3. Stumbling upon funny historical typos and telling stories about them.
4. Starting a section with a list in an article with the words “So, the List”.

This blog post about the concept of a “listicle” will attempt to honor all four traditions.

What is a Listicle?

A listicle is an article or a blog post grown from a list. The term “listicle” is a combination of the words “list” and “article”. Also, a post built in the listicle format is known as a list post.

Usually, you can see the listicle nature of a post from the very title of it. Here are some titles of the real world listicle examples:

• 15 Best Woodworking YouTube Channels You Didn’t Know You Needed.
• 14 Best Guitar VST Plugins (Free and Paid) in 2024.
• Every 2025 Color of the Year That's Been Announced So Far.

When and Where Did Listicles Appear?

This is a difficult question to answer, when did the humanity invent this popular format. In accordance with the first tradition of the blog, the word “listicle” was first used as though it had always existed.

Referring to the Oxford English Dictionary, listicles first appeared in 2007 [1]. However, there is earlier evidence. The “A Way with Words” portal cites examples from 2001 [2].

Thanks to the Internet Archive, praised many times in this blog, we can confirm that the earliest discovered mention of the word “listicle” was on July 14, 2001 [3]. It looked like this:

7/14/01 - UPDATE - A page with people photos is now up! Also, added an article to the listicle to the lists section. Also, added many Maggie photos!

Thus, we honored the second tradition of the blog.

As an aside, Google Ngram Viewer shows that the rise in the use of the listicles began in the late 2000s.

The graph reveals that there were spikes even in the 19th century. These turned out to be scanning errors in old texts.

The phenomenon itself certainly existed before the word. Apparently, any of the often-mentioned in this blog books of lists is essentially a great example of a high-quality listicle. Well, not all lists could be treated there as a valuable content, but I suppose that it is the greatest humanity collection of the well-written listicles.

The named list format articles initially was mentioned only in the posts and articles. In books, the “listicle” word began appearing in the 2010s again as a confirmation of the existing phenomena, except one interesting case.

In the book “Collections of the State Historical Society of North Dakota” there is a mention of some person named Charles Lesticle [4]. However, in the same book's index, he is referred to with a typo as Charles Listicle.

Types of Listicles

Interestingly, there are already several types of listicles identified in this relatively young concept. The internet describes three kinds of listicles [5]:

1. Ranked,
2. Thematic,
3. Random Order.

Ranked Listicles

The first type involves using an ordered list as its basis. For example, a list article with the theme “500 Greatest Songs of All Time According to Rolling Stones Magazine” is a ranked listicle. As well as the one named “The best hotels in Canada for Your Next Vacation”.

What makes the first example ranked is that the song at #1 is assumed by the authors of these bullet points to be better than the song at #2, and #300 to be better than #500.

Thematic Listicles

This type of text is based on a hierarchical list. The content is defined by a general theme, which is then divided into subsections.

Here’s an example of a hierarchical list that could serve as the basis for a popular topic text with multiple paragraphs of description. You can even continue the topic with several more list posts to cover every item in-depth.

Where to go for the weekend:

• Nature
  • Forest
  • Pond
  • Mountain
• Sports Entertainment
  • Football
  • Table Tennis
  • Kiting
• Concerts
  • Rock
  • Pop
  • Classical

From this backbone, with some effort, you can write a listicle outlining ways to entertain yourself on the weekend. The structure of all the points is clear to the author and the resulting blog post supported with visually appealing photos is valuable for potential readers.

We won't spend time in the post describing all these valuable items. I guess this information is easy to discover on other resources.

Random Order Listicles

This type of listicle is based on an unordered list. For example, the text “10 Rules for Living by Winnie-the-Pooh” doesn’t require a strict listicle form. Go it first, always having a big barrel of honey or something else, be it even more or fewer items, you’ll hardly lose a reader's interest.

The Structure of Listicles

The reader may have noticed that the key element in organizing each of the types mentioned above is the type of list used. The structure of the listicles tends to completely depend on it. So, if you come up with another kind of list, you can invent a new way to write listicles.

As a general rule, be it simple tips or complex topics, choose the appropriate list type, write list points and create content around them.

Where to Use Listicles?

Such materials are often used for entertainment (“500 Greatest Songs…”, “10 Rules…”). E.g., the BuzzFeed website provides lots of different entertaining list posts daily. BuzzFeed style listicles often have attention-grabbing titles and not that valuable information inside. However, they are funny and easy to read.

Other listicles work to organize your travel or leisure (“10 Best Attractions in Istanbul”, “5 Fun Games When There’s No Internet”).

Some list articles guide you through the process of doing something. They contain actionable steps that readers need to make to achieve their goals. It makes sense to say that these list posts are built on top of operational definitions.

Listicles also work great for content marketing strategies. Moreover, some bloggers make significant profits from them. Some listicles are huge and contain the in-depth information on the complicated topic. Especially the ones whose role is to drive traffic for the consequent goods or services purchase.

The good example of such a list post can be the “The Best Podcast Microphones for All Abilities and Budgets”. My Firefox reader estimates it to take 28 to 34 minutes, which is a decent time to spend on a list post. These types of posts are sometimes named the “ultimate guides”.

The mentioned post's goal is to first inform and then route customers' demand to satisfaction. The page is well optimized for search engines by core keywords, secondary keywords and other related keywords. The links on the page are so-called affiliate links. When customers come using them, and make a purchase, bloggers have their percent.

Conclusion

A listicle is a list that has grown into an article. Lists come in all shapes and sizes, and so does the resulting writing. Listicles not only entertain or guide us, but they are also a powerful support for today’s internet economy, being the important part of the marketing content strategy.

The listicle format prevails over the traditional articles format in a sense that it is easy to quickly scan to get a good amount of information at a first glance. Writing a listicle is also usually a convenient action as a well-crafted list provides you a good basement to start.

Did you enjoy reading about listicles? Subscribe to the “So List” blog and discover more about the forms lists and checklists take. You’ll be amazed at their variety!

List of Links

[1] Listicle from the Oxford English Dictionary
[2] Listicle from A Way with Words
[3] Archived Page of My Comments and News from John Davin’s Website
[4] Collections of the State Historical Society of North Dakota from the Internet Archive
[5] “Listicle” from Wikipedia