Innovation
From the Archives: Clara Barton, Act III–the American Red Cross
For the next little while, I’m juggling revisions with prepping for a talk about Civil War nurses. (I love giving talks, but I was overly optimistic when I agreed to do this one last September.) It makes for an interesting mix of tough broads competing for my attention. Working on the theory that if I’m…
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From the Archives: Semicolon
Some recent back and forth with a long time blog reader about paper, punctuation and other writerly subjects inspired me to go back to Cecilia Watson’s Semicolon, which I reviewed in August, 2019. Here’s what I said then. I am pleased to report that the book is just as good as I remember. If…
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From the Archives: A Brief History of the Pencil
In yesterday’s newsletter (1), I went down a research rabbit hole, looking for the difference, if any, between using blue pencils and red pencils as an editing tool. (Plus the pencil’s use by military and authoritarian censors, which is the place where I leaped into the rabbit hole.) In the process, I went back to…
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