I am convinced that the quality of writing in the New York Times has diminished in recent years.

I've used the text between these two spectrum bars as the basis for a page on the subject.

If that is true

I associate this decline -- if it is real --

If that is real

with the onset of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003

preparation for and execution of the U.S.-led...

whether accurately or not, I correlate a marked decrease in cohesive ligic within the text of NYT articles -- as well as a dramatic drastic sharp steep rise in the numbers of typographical errors and associated small bugups

I like the word bugups. I think I just invented it.

[I have a theory] assuming, for the sake of the theory, that a decline in textual quality is a fact -.

[One man with a theory could not muster the statistical might scope to that would he woiuld need one would need to test the theory

[The mater of typographical and omissional errors could in theory is in theory testable -- but would properly require a team of skilled proof copyreaders. The matter of logical cohesiveness would be more difficult to quantify -- (not to mention) controversial to define with any precision]

But here's the anecdotal experience of one who enjoys a good newspaper.

I used to be able to frequently able to identify a text reprinted from the NYT into another by another paper. I would get that "feel" from it, check the byline, and find confirmed it was an NYT article. This "feeling" had nothing to do -- I believe -- with any sort of editorial-bias tone betrayal by the style of the writing. Instead, it had everything to do with a style of logic, a fidelity and a consistency that I found peculiar to the NYT and for which I loved the paper.

The "logic" that I used to find so enjoyable in the NYT

Words had consequence. The reader could have confidence. The text -- always conditional, as any writing; always an artful, partly-subjective perspective, no matter how idealistically objective -- bore consequence. The most delightful [expression] of this was in the fact of case of most any question that the article caused in the mind

I found that when I was reading an article and a small question arose in my mind -- a question reaised by the text of an early paragraph -- I found that this question would at least be addressed in a paragraph later in the article.

A simple thing -- but delightful.

The experience of reading quality prose.

It was enough to satisfy my desire to read good writing -- enough to mollify the guilty fact that I did not like books.

I still read the NYT in the form of the IHT, here across the Atlantic.

But the paper, it seems to me, is not what it was.