This article has a theoretical aim and explores the semiotics of lists and tables. It takes a historical perspective and looks at both the invention of writing (phylogeny) and the writing development of the child (ontogeny) in order to uncover how meaning-making evolves through the use of semiotic and material resources. Lists on clay followed the invention of writing and were used for bureaucratic purposes, to plan and take control over e.g. food, persons and words, which we recognize in today’s grocery lists, participant lists and word lists. When literacy grows and elaborated classification systems are codified, the table becomes an important semiotic tool that enables detailed and systematic comparisons by its use of materiality, where columns and rows intersect and linguistic and numerical signs can be combined. At the end of the article, I synthesize my observations in a model that shows what kind of meaning-making lists and tables are apt for.