Josh Katz is an American journalist and graphics editor at The New York Times. He is perhaps best known for the dialect quiz he created, which was published in the New York Times[1] and which led to him writing the book Speaking American: How Y’all, Youse , and You Guys Talk.[2] Katz lives in Brooklyn.
Katz studied philosophy and political science at Drew University then obtained his master's degree in statistics from North Carolina State University and then joined The New York Times in 2013. [3] He has written numerous articles for The New York Times, where he covers sports, politics, and culture for "The Upshot". "The Upshot" is a section of The New York Times that combines data visualization and journalistic analysis of news.[4]
Katz's best known work came in 2013 when he was an intern at The New York Times when he created the newspaper's most popular piece of content that year.[5] The article was called "How Y'all, Youse, and You Guys Talk". In it Katz employed an algorithm and statistical analyses on data provided by Harvard University researchers.[5] His book-length extrapolation of the piece, called Speaking American: How Y'all, Youse, and You Guys Talk: A Visual Guide was published three years later.[2] The book takes questions from over 350,000 unique survey responses about pronunciation and word choice to map where people live in America depending on how they speak.[1][5][6]