Welcome to the Post-Text Future
The internet was born in text. Now, video and audio are ascendant, writing is being left behind, and everything will be different.
More from The New York Times
Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to do With Self-Control)
Procrastination is a self-reinforcing cycle. The more you stall important work, the more you’ll continue to do so. Yet procrastination doesn’t result from a dearth of motivation or productivity; it manifests from a failure to regulate negative emotions. If you are mired in a chronic procrastination cycle, journalist Charlotte Lieberman helps you dig your way out. She interviewed an array of psychologists, authors and professors to figure out how best to end the self-destructive cycle. Lieberman provides a range of tips to guide procrastinators into a more positive frame of mind.
«“Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem,” said Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa.»
The Making of Vladimir Putin
Tracing Putin’s 22-year slide from statesman to tyrant.
We Need to Talk About How Good A.I. Is Getting
We’re in a golden age of progress in artificial intelligence. It’s time to start taking its potential and risks seriously.
Help, Bing Won’t Stop Declaring Its Love for Me
A very strange conversation with the chatbot built into Microsoft’s search engine left me deeply unsettled. Even frightened.
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How to write the perfect sentence
Orwell advised cutting as many words as possible, Woolf found energy in verbs, and Baldwin aimed for ‘a sentence as clean as a bone’. What can we learn from celebrated authors about the art of writing well?
What makes writing more readable?
Looking at how to make writing easier to read
«Writing text that can be understood by as many people as possible seems like an obvious best practice. But from news media to legal guidance to academic research, the way we write often creates barriers to who can read it. Plain language—a style of writing that uses simplified sentences, everyday vocabulary, and clear structure—aims to remove those barriers.»
Why Write? - The Paris Review
“I’ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it.”
«I encountered Joan Didion’s famous line about why she writes—“entirely to find out what I’m thinking”»
How to Write Usefully
February 2020What should an essay be? Many people would say persuasive. That's what a lot of us were taught essays should be. But I think we can aim for something more ambitious: that an essay should…
«Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn't already know, and tells them as unequivocally as possible.»
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