How Einstein wrote

Professor John Stachel, a former director of the Einstein Papers Project, believes the secret to Einstein's writing style can be found in his comment to an interviewer: "I am the acoustic type. I learn by ear and give by word. Writing is difficult." But his letters flowed easily in a clear stream-of-consciousness - he wrote the way he would have spoken, without pretensions.

"I think he heard the words before he wrote them, and only when they sounded right did he commit them to paper," Stachel says. "Many poets operate this way, but I doubt many scientists do." He speculates that this pattern may have stemmed from Einstein's childhood habit of quietly saying words to himself before repeating them out loud, a kind of self-echolalia.