Math, Writing, and the World: The Freshman Writing Course I’m Teaching in the Fall

(There’s a printer- and footnote-friendly pdf version—with links still working!—here if you prefer.) This fall, I’m teaching a freshman writing course at the University of Michigan.1 I’ll be writing a lot about this course and related topics over the coming months, so I thought I’d take a moment to introduce the course and talk about …

John McPhee and the Irregular Restrictive Which

It’s been a busy few weeks with research and the end of the semester. I promise I’ll get to writing substantive posts very soon. In the interim, I’d like to express my incredulity at John McPhee’s ignorance of the “irregular restrictive which” until it was pointed out to him by New Yorker editor William Shawn: Mr. …