Once Carter saw how government reports got written, he understood why no one ever really wanted to read them. Richard was a natural writer, but there was no place in the process for a natural writer. “There were all these stupid rules,” said Carter, whose first job was making sure that whatever Richard wrote conformed to the U.S. government’s style manual. “Like you need to put countries and states in alphabetical order, so no one is offended. You can’t say ‘over’ three hundred bucks—you have to say ‘more than.’ ” The bigger obstacle to clear prose was the sheer number of people invited to
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