Hey devs! Time for another installment in our Best Practices for Writing on DEV series. Before we delve into some guidelines for choosing and framing your topic, I want to talk to you about something I see a lot here on DEV.
Listicles
Ahh, listicles. They're kind of an article, but mostly a list. You love them, you hate them, you just can’t get away from them in our current content landscape.
Sometimes listicles are great! This one by @asheeshh is a favorite. Other times, though, they come across as repetitive fluff and don’t bring much helpful, interesting, or fresh information to the conversation.
Best Practices for Writing Listicles on DEV
If you love writing listicles, Use These Five Tips To Blow Readers’ Minds And Save The World From Bad Listicles Forever you might want to consider the following points when drafting:
- Why am I choosing a listicle format? (If it’s because you don’t have enough knowledge, content, or time for a proper article, consider doing more research or gaining more experience before you write on this topic.)
- Are there already listicles on this topic on DEV, and if so, is mine better or different than the ones already written? (Use the search bar to find out!)
- Do I have to title this list of things with a click-baity headline that harkens back to the early days of BuzzFeed? (No, you don’t! You can, but it may turn readers away from clicking—the opposite effect of what you’re going for.)
Of course, you are welcome to write whatever and however you want on DEV, as long as it adheres to our Code of Conduct. Just know that high quality listicles that bring something new and valuable to the conversation will be upvoted by moderators and queued for sharing on social…and uninspired, repetitive listicles won’t.
That's all for now! Stay tuned for an upcoming post on topics, as well as another one about another hot topic...self-promo on DEV! 😱
Top comments (6)
Never catch me writing a listicle...
101 Digital Accessibility (a11y) tips and tricks
GrahamTheDev ・ Jul 30 '21
In all seriousness though, listicles are generally low quality garbage.
There is only one rule if you want to write a decent listicle, then make sure you add something to the conversation. Don't just copy paste a company's blurb, add what you like about a product or service. Add the use cases and where it excels vs the competition etc.
Nobody dislikes listicles as a format...they dislike copy paste jobs that add no value and are the exact same as if you just Googled the item being discussed.
Loved this sentence
"listicles". I never listened this word before. Thanks!
(english is not my native language).
Thank you to this series of hints about writing too!
I think the best advice here is if you find another Lisicki with almost the same title, just don't do it, we have enough best book, video, plugin, course, framework, easy money, spam, conference, author, cats, errors, chatgpt generated, clean code, git repo listing already.
They probably should get automatically tags as listicle so we can block them from our feed.
I agree
This is very important, I don't think many people care, though.