14.5% of American adults age 16 and over lack basic prose literacy skills — defined as ranging from being fully unable to read to only being able to understand short, commonplace text in English ...

Prose texts are usually defined by their length ... Are mid-way in length between short stories and a full-length novel. Usually have one plot-line. Are not always divided into chapters.

But fans of what’s sometimes known as flash fiction, or very-short prose, often cite it as the ur-text of their form. Until recently, though, that form was a pretty lonely place to operate.

Such attributes betray the text’s humanity. For these reasons ... Tian and his professors hypothesize that the burstiness of human-written prose may be a consequence of human creativity and short-term ...

His narrative prose, whether novels, short stories or parables, is universal and timeless, which is why his texts are read in schools worldwide, in the original or in translation, and as classics of ...