And students who take courses requiring them to write more than twenty pages a semester and to read more than forty pages a week show greater improvement.

NEWYORKER: Live and Learn

The trading algorithms read the news flow and buy, the news writers look at the buying and decide it must be good and so write more positive news words, leading the algorithms to read them in turn, and so buy more.

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All of us want our kids to grow up more likely to read and write and do math at grade level, to graduate high school, hold a job, and form more stable families of their own.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama Speaks to National Governors Association

Besides the enjoyment and enhanced personal freedom that comes from being able to read and write, blind persons who use braille are much more likely to be employed.

WHITEHOUSE: Providing Literacy for Informed Citizenry through Braille | The White House

People receiving payments could also be expected to learn to read, write and count, to make them more employable.

BBC: Long-term unemployed 'could have benefits cut'

In such a world, learning to think for oneself could well be more important than simply learning to read and write.

ECONOMIST: Will reading and writing remain important?

Ukrainian has become more popular: people in their twenties and thirties write and read in Ukrainian, using it for corporate communications, along with English and Russian.

FORBES: Language As A Weapon of Mass Distraction

And more than that, I wanted to talk, or read, or write to someone who understood what I was going through.

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