Is this Roman ring the inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien’s ring of power? Maybe, maybe not. It makes for an interesting story, and at least you can say that he was thinking about magical rings before Lord of the Rings was written.

Freelance journalist Nate Thayer’s blog post about his experience with The Atlantic has made some waves. In short, Thayer was pretty annoyed when Olga Khazan, an Atlantic editor, asked him to re-write a piece published elsewhere for The Atlantic — for free. Thayer reproduced their email exchange, which included him reminding her that “exposure” does not [...]

It is understanding how the Great Vowel Shift moved pronunciation away from spelling — and how that older spelling was fixed and fossilized by the 15th-century introduction of printing. Three quick items: 1. A 10-minute radio discussion of the Great Vowel Shift, from the CBC’s Sunday Edition. 2. A website devoted to the Great Vowel [...]

See the leather straps crossing the horse’s neck horizontally?. Those are reins, held by the rider and used to direct the horse left or right. Raise your hand if you have held a set of horse reins in the last year. Yeah, about what I thought — not many of you have. As the Wikipedia [...]

• At Wytch of the North, a lengthy blog post on being a godspouse. • A small publisher seeks submissions for a volume on “transgressive rites and rituals.” We are looking primarily for practical articles describing new and original rites and rituals that cross barriers and challenge social norms. Although the bulk of the book [...]

Dave Wilton links to a fine rant in The Atlantic about hyphens. (Yes, we care.)  And that link will get you to this one in Mental Floss about the difference between the em-dash and the en-dash. Now I am careful to use the en-dash when separating ranges of numbers, such as an article being on pages [...]

Servers die, hard drives die, disks degrade, formats change. Paper still has its uses. Your mother can help — and other hints.

“Back to the basics” works if you chose the right basics. (We could debate that.) “The Writing Revolution,” an article in The Atlantic, argues that attention to basic rhetorical principles — as opposed to expressing your feelings or writing in order to become a better person— helps disadvantaged high school students to succeed. And so [...]

Seriously, Jonathan Frantzen wrote The Corrections blindfolded? So this article on writers coping with Internet distraction claims. Since most of my work requires copious reference to notes and text — and since I am a lousy touch-typist — the blindfold would not work. I understand what this guy did, however: Born in 1985, [Ned] Beauman [...]

If you like reading lists, here is one from Publishers Weekly. I confess to having read none of them, although I did manage Gravity’s Rainbow, one of the runners-up — twice!