Salem

“If American history really does begin in enslavement, in genocide, then the lies, and the policies that attack writing from beyond the order, must not just be deemed possible. They must be expected.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

“If you write something that your intended reader thinks is going to be an unpleasant slog, you can bet that they are going to put off reading it until . . . later.”
― Todd Rogers, Writing for Busy Readers: Communicate More Effectively in the Real World

“The mechanisms for introducing variation—the cultural equivalent of mutations—are generators of “error” or of “innovation” in social learning. For example, a new cultural variant could be produced by one person or group making a mistake while learning from another; trying through their own efforts to improve something acquired through social learning (using four rather than three knots to secure a fishing line, deliberately or in error); or combining information from different sources (after observing one person using three knots of type A, and another person using one knot of type B, the learner uses three knots of type B).”
― Cecilia Heyes, Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking

“Regardless of specifics, the likelihood that the reader will perform that action depends heavily on how well the request is communicated and on how easy it is to fulfill.”
― Todd Rogers, Writing for Busy Readers: Communicate More Effectively in the Real World