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paulgraham.comFor a manifesto, that’s well above the acceptable limit in concept nouns, generalized ideas and passive verbs, and someone told Hayden it wouldn’t do. Rewriting it on the spot, he got personal and specific and created a classic: We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All
Because we aren’t just talking about entertainment here, or distraction, or leisure. We’re talking about the narratives that comprise the... See more
The Hollywood Originality Edition
Everything Is Television
When we think about engaging the passion of the learner, we need to think about her sense of indwelling, because that is her greatest source of inspiration, but it is also the largest reservoir she has of tacit knowledge.
Douglas Thomas • A New Culture of Learning
After I had read various good and bad examples, the principals began to hear the difference between their true selves and their educator selves. The problem was how to close the gap. I recited my four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. I explained about using active verbs and avoiding “concept nouns.” I told them not to
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
what the French fin de siècle social theorist Gabriel Tarde called “the grooves of borrowed thought”71—patterns of thought that are unlikely to create any serious disruption of the status quo.