Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
On an overnight train to Madurai, the woman in the berth opposite mine wrote for almost an hour by the light of a small torch. Her notebook was fat and cloth-covered. She wrote slowly, now and then striking out a line. For five years I have helped build a note-taking app, so I watched her more closely than was polite.
When I asked, she said she had tried keeping a diary on her phone and given up. On the phone she kept deleting things. On paper a cancelled line is still there, so her second thoughts stay in plain sight. Months later she can look back and see how her mind moved, line by line. I think she has a point that people in my line of work rarely admit. An app is built to make writing smooth. It fixes spellings and saves the neat final version. A diary is not meant to be neat. It is meant to catch you before you have tidied yourself up. Her notebook also has no audience. It sends no reminders and waits for no likes.
None of this makes paper safer. A notebook can be left on a train or soaked in a leaking bag, and anyone can read it. Mine would be locked with a password and copied to the cloud. You also cannot search a stack of old notebooks for the day you first met someone. She agreed about the searching. About the rest she only shrugged and went back to her page, the torch held in her teeth.
Which of the following best expresses the central argument of the passage?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → A handwritten diary keeps a truer record of how a person’s thinking changes, though it is less safe and harder to search.
The writer takes the side of the paper diary but also admits its weak points.
- On paper a cancelled line “is still there”. So the woman can see “how her mind moved”. The writer says she “has a point”.
- The last paragraph gives the other side. Paper is not safer, and old notebooks cannot be searched.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Note-taking apps have now made paper diaries pointless for anyone who wants to keep their writing safe. — Incorrect. Overstated: The writer does say an app is safer. But the writer never calls paper diaries pointless. The writer agrees they do something apps do not.
Option 2: People who still write diaries by hand mostly do so because they find phone apps hard to use. — Incorrect. Wrong reason: The woman gave up the phone diary because she “kept deleting things”. Nothing says the app was hard to use.
Option 4: Writing slowly by hand at night is a calmer habit than typing on a phone before sleep. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The woman does write slowly at night. But the passage never compares how calm the two habits are.