Punctuation

Passage III — The Lead That Isn’t

[1] Despite its name, a pencil’s “lead” contains no lead at all. Its gray core is a blend of clay and graphite, a soft form of carbon. Manufacturers control it’s (21) hardness by adjusting the recipe: more clay produces a harder core that leaves a lighter line, while more graphite produces a softer core and a darker line. Many artists therefore keep several grades on hand. A hard (22) pencil for faint sketch lines and a soft one for deep shadows.

[2] The eraser at the other end—usually made of synthetic rubber, is (23) held in place by a thin metal band called a ferrule. Because graphite marks rest on the surface of the paper instead of soaking into its fibers, they can be removed and taken off (24) with a few strokes of that eraser. Pencils are sold in many stores. (25)

[3] At the factory, powdered graphite and clay are blended with water and pressed into thin rods. The rods are then baked in a kiln at a high temperature that is very hot (26) until they harden. Next, workers lay the rods in parallel grooves cut into a thin slab of cedar and glue a matching grooved slab on top. This wooden sandwich is sliced into individual pencils, each one is (27) shaped, sanded, and painted. (28)

[4] Two centuries later, the basic design has barely changed, and its appeal is easy to understand: a pencil (29) needs no ink, never leaks, and can be sharpened again and again. Pencils remain popular with students and artists alike. (30)

Passage II — Learning the Grain

[1] The canoe had spent eleven years upside down in my uncle’s barn before I dragged it into the daylight. Its cedar strips had turned gray, and the varnish had cracked into a pattern like dried mud. Covered in dust and pigeon feathers, my uncle had clearly forgotten the boat. (11)

[2] Restoring it would require three things; patience, (12) a heat gun, and a great deal of sandpaper. I already owned the last two. Patience, as my uncle kept reminding me, I would have to learn off of (13) the wood itself.

[3] I have always enjoyed working outdoors. (14) For the first week, I sanded in quick circles, the way I had seen people do in online videos. The wood came up fuzzy and scarred. Then my uncle ran his thumb along one strip and pointed out the faint lines inside it. The fibers in every strip, he explained, leans (15) the same way, like the hair on a dog’s back. Sanding with the grain leaves the surface smooth; to sand against it lifts (16) tiny splinters.

[4] After that, the work went faster. Over the next two months, I stripped the old varnish, patched a long split with a thin piece of new cedar, and brushed on three coats of marine varnish. The patch was a shade lighter than the rest of the hull at first, but after a few weeks in the sun it blended (17) into the surrounding wood.

[5] Last August, I finally carried the canoe down to the lake. It floated level and dry, its hull glowing amber in the late sun, (18) and my uncle, standing on the dock, declared it more smoother (19) than it had been on the day he bought it.

Passage III — Notebooks Instead of Shotguns

[1] On Christmas Day in 1900, twenty-seven birdwatchers in the United States and Canada went outdoors carrying notebooks instead of shotguns. They were taking part in an experiment proposed by Frank Chapman, an ornithologist (21) at the American Museum of Natural History. For decades, hunters in many rural areas had marked the holiday with a “side hunt,” a contest in which teams competed to shoot the most birds. Chapman, who worried about shrinking bird populations, (22) suggested a new tradition: count the birds instead.

[2] That first count was small. The observers recorded about ninety species, and they’re (23) totals were printed in Bird-Lore, a magazine Chapman edited. Every year since then, annually, (24) the count has been held again, and it has grown enormously. Today, tens of thousands of volunteers take part. Each group covering (25) a circle fifteen miles across, counting every bird seen or heard there in a single day.

[3] Counting birds on one day a year may sound more like a hobby than like science. For example, (26) the results now form one of the longest-running wildlife surveys in the world. Because volunteers have returned to many of the same circles for decades, scientists can eyeball (27) how bird populations have changed over time. In 2009, researchers used count data to show that many North American species had shifted their winter ranges northward; some (28) by more than a hundred miles.

[4] The count has changed in other ways as well. Participants once mailed their tallies on paper; today most enter them online, where anyone can look up more than a century of results. What began as a protest against a holiday hunt has become a record that no single scientist could ever have collected.