Friday; November 14
The other night Jeane and I were watching a movie and came across a phrase neither of us had ever heard – listicle. The characters in the show used the word several times so we finally decided that we needed to figure out what they were talking about. Come to find out, a listicle is a piece of writing or other content presented in the form of a list. (And who said watching the rom-coms on Great American Family or Hallmark Movie Channels aren’t educational!). Now, I don’t know who coined the phrase, but it appears that it began to become popular in the mid-2000s. Let me rephrase that – the word became popular in that decade; the literary device is much older. As I reflected on listicles, I thought of the Apostle Paul pretty quickly. One of his notable writing techniques is listing. There are times when he could have painted word pictures to describe a concept; but, instead, chose to list connecting words to present his point. ...