I recently discovered a writing tool, and I literally fallen in love with the first time I opened it. Is DarkRoom, a minimal text-only editor that help you concentrate by making the entire screen black leaving only the essentials: words and scrolling arrows (see image).
Then I realized that I really prefer this kind of editors as I write my emails in text-only, I take my notes in Notepad (recently in Notepad2, recommended), I always write “readme documents” in .txt files rather than in Word or other processors.
And this surely influence the way I write, the way I compose sentences, the way I explain concepts, and so on. In a positive way, I think. Because, without colors, without text formatting (bold, italic, font size…), I have only words to express my self clearly, to make readers get the points and catch the concepts I’m writing about.
Further more, I’m not used to have grammar tools helping me. So I often check what I’m writing, and this sometimes drive me to better rewrite a sentence or a period.
I think this good exercise I’ve always done without the intention to getting better in the way I express what I want to say, in the end, really helped me. Specially in English, which is not my first language.
On the other hand, text formatting may be important too for the reader, and sometimes I use it in my posts. Perhaps, the solution may be to apply it only when you finished to compose the text.
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