The newspaper clipping, neatly labeled “International Herald Tribune,” came from Kay in France. She had tucked the essay in with a note that said “this has ‘Anne’ written all over it.” 

The topic: structural priming, the unconscious influences on writing, how what we read settles into our brain and sets up shop there and, before we know it, we’re penning lines better suited to reports than poems. It’s a habit we can break by cleansing our “linguistic palate” — reading widely and “against type.”

The author, Michael Erard, has written short stories, essays, reviews and nonfiction books — but his day job is a think tank researcher. In other words, he says, “I’m a dancer who walks for a living.”  And he dances better, he says, if he shuts off the Web and dips into a page of Virginia Tufte’s Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style before beginning his creative work.

Reading this essay was like turning a kaleidoscope and bringing a new palette into place. It’s something I’ve thought about for years, but couldn’t have articulated.

And it’s worth noting that although I might have stumbled across the article online, it came to me because someone I love thought I would like it. Which makes it an example not of structural priming but of friendship priming, the uncanny and unconscious connections that exist, that flourish, between friends.