Notebook Dump

I recently got an email from my friend Milena Davison in which she commented, “I find myself increasingly annoyed with the use of ‘redact’ and ‘redaction.’ I learned and sometimes even used these technical terms in connection with textual — mostly ancient — studies. When and why were they appropriated and substituted for ‘blacked out’ or ‘censored’?”

I immediately got onto the websites of The New York Times, Google Books, and the Oxford English Dictionary – as I do — in search of an answer. Fift...