SECOND READERS' FINAL THOUGHTS

I'll bet you thought dot matrix printers were a thing of the past.

I was a relatively new instructor at Indiana University, back in the 90s when everyone used dot matrix printers, which hammered out the letters onto a cloth ribbon, a bit like an old-fashioned typewriter. A student named Chance Gradeless (really) turned in a paper that, at first, looked more like the discarded drafts of an art project, with pencil slashings covering the last pages. "What in the world is this?" I asked. He explained that his printer had run out of ribbon half way through the printing, so rather than turn in the paper late, he decided to let it keep hammering out the letters, even though it didn't print any ink. Then, when it was finished, he used a pencil to shade it all in like a brass rubbing. "If you hold it up to the light," he told me, "you can read it in relief." Needless to say, I accepted a revised print-out later in the day.

DR. DEIS

A verbal experiment George Meredith would be proud of.