Can a List have Only Two Items

Factual Questions
41
  1. Ouch
  2. It is a serious question
  3. Bye, Opal
    :frowning:
42

Why are three items a list, not just a trio?

Despite your derision for the question, you have provided a very feeble answer.

43

Quartet, quintet, et cetera. There’s no number necessary to make a list.

44

Agreed - a list, as a concept, can be empty - like a table.

I believe Opal’s three item minimum was always a definition of writing style, - that is, anything shorter than three items should be written inline (e.g “this thing *and *that thing”), rather than a bulleted or numbered list.

45

This is actually something that comes up often when I’m writing reports for clients. My colleagues in the IT world are list-oriented and have no problem with 1 or 2 items in a list, since that’s not at all uncommon in programming. The English major in me says, “dude, you could totally put that into a sentence.” To which they respond that lists are easier both to read and right.

So my versions of reports end up with lengthy paragraphs. Theirs are polluted with bullet-points. They suck separately, but equally.

46

:smiley:

47

Apparently, *Goedel, Escher, Bach *is on your list of books that you’ve already digested.

48

So I recently went to the music store looking to buy some sheet music for my piano classes, and in advance I had prepared a list of composers whose music I was interested in procuring.

It looked like this:

-Chopin
-Liszt

49

Sure, nothing wrong with that. The list form allows you to add more if you think of them. If you had the idea of listing before settling on the first name, then you had a list of no items. Or if you buy those two, haven’t thought of others yet but are open to, then you’re maintaining a running list of (temporarily) no items.

50

This one bit Bertrand Russell on the arse.

[QUOTE=Tim R. Mortiss]
Apparently, *Goedel, Escher, Bach *is on your list of books that you’ve already digested.
[/QUOTE]
This book raises your IQ by 25% - even if all you do is look at the pictures.

51

50 posts and no-one has linked to the relevant xkcd yet? Do we not do that any more? Did I miss a memo (or perhaps it was a list)?

52

You’re assuming that sequence is important, but it may not be. If not, it’s formalized as a set. Even the notation for a set is a list of its members:

set X = { a, b, c }

In particular, a shopping list is generally ordered by the time at which you think of an item that belongs on the list, which is rarely significant. Two shopping lists with the same items in different orders could be called the same shopping list.

Is that pedantic enough for ya? :wink:

In any case, I agree with the concensus that the concept of a list doesn’t require any specific cardinality, but stylistically the distinction between 2 and three can be useful.

Like the programmers mentioned above, I’d rather see a list of two items listed as a list rather than left inline in a sentence/paragraph, but it depends on how complex the ideas are. In any case, when shopping, be sure not to forget the
[ul]
[li]bread[/li][li]milk[/li][/ul]

53

I didn’t know about opalcat when I posted. Very sorry.

54

What’s the cite to OpalCat’s original, primordial discussion with Dopers on this OP?

Opal recently died, hence the sad “Bye Opal” list-making.