Room in the margin

Write a sentence near the edge of a page and a curious thing happens. There’s hardly any room to change your mind. Move it a thumb’s width in, and there’s space for a question, an arrow or the word you couldn’t quite find.

Try it with the next conversation you want to remember. Put the words you heard in the middle. Later, add what you think they meant alongside them. If your reading changes again, there’s room for a third mark.

When you turn back to the page, you can see where you hesitated. That small bit of history is worth keeping.