Really? Let's write a shopping list on a piece of paper in JSON and XML. Which one would be more similar to the way we write down lists in real life?

XML:

   <list>
    <items> 
       <item>Milk</item>
       <item>Eggs</item>
       <item>Bread</item>
       <item>Butter</item>
     </items>
   </list>

JSON:

    {
       "list": {
         "items": [
            "Milk",
            "Eggs",
            "Bread",
            "Butter"
        ]
      }
    }

I don't know that either one is particularly close to the way I'd write down a list in real life, to be honest. This is a pretty trivial sample, and neither is especially hard to read/parse by a human. But the JSON still looks closer to line-noise to me. :-)