How to draw dotted lines on chalkboards, MIT style (2021)

> Blackboards are not black, they are grey

Yes, and tennis shoes aren't only used for tennis.

What you wrote is not correct. First, I assume you are not making the technically-correct-only assertion that since everything, including Vantablack, reflects some light, it isn't truly black but only a dark shade of grey.

Quoting Wikipedia, "Blackboards were originally made of smooth, thin sheets of black or dark grey slate stone". That's "black" and "dark grey".

But you don't need to take Wikipedia's work. We can look at books from a century ago and read a book where they improvised a blackboard using black paint: "This space was carefully sandpapered and immediately after received its first coat of black paint, prepared with oil, which served as a foundation. After 24 hours, another layer of the black color followed, (this time without oil) and finally, in two more days, the black brush completed, from every standpoint, a perfect blackboard." https://archive.org/details/jstor-3406078/page/n1/mode/2up?q...

Or the 1905 book "Nelson's blackboard drawing" which mentions "So long as the black surface of the board is visible, the sketch is quite conventional" at https://archive.org/details/b1625318/page/n121/mode/2up?q=bl... . (As an aside, there are some excellent chalk drawings in that book.)

Thus, black surfaces for chalk use in a classroom have long been referred to as "blackboards."

You can see the transition to "chalkboard" in the 1950s (emphasis mine in the following) in a 1955 publication saying "And don’t overlook the old standby, the chalkboard. Notice that we refer to it as a chalkboard, since it is not black. A green board and yellow chalk will not produce the halo effect that results from using white chalk on a blackboard. You can make a simple and inexpensive chalkboard by painting the smooth side of a piece of tempered masonite with green chalkboard paint." https://archive.org/details/CAT10679308/page/2/mode/2up?q=ch...

As well as in this 1953 newspaper article titled "Britain Bans Old-Fashioned Blackboard For The New Colored Chalkboard", wherein we read how "a slab of black on the wall has a tendency to create a dark, depressing, uncomfortable and gloomy atmosphere", and how they will be replaced "with a 'chalkboard' in some one of nine brighter colors" https://archive.org/details/1953-04-11-1953-04-30/page/n167/... .

The trend continues, like this 1962 comment that "The chalkboard (blackboard) is one of the oldest graphic or visual instruction devices. The earlier slate blackboard has now been replaced by white, green, or yellow satin-surfaced or glareproof glass or plastic chalk-board." at https://archive.org/details/audiovisualmater0000unse/page/66...

By the 1970s you can see Sears referring to an "old-fashioned blackboard" as a "black chalkboard" at https://archive.org/details/1970-1979-sears-wishbook-toys_20... and at the bottom of the page is a flip chalkboard with described as blue on one side and black on the other.

> So why is it that black is renamed on the grounds of accuracy?

As they said in the 1950s, "we refer to it as a chalkboard, since it is not black."

While your "hypersensitivity" hypothesis doesn't explain why the changing usage started in the pre-Civil Rights era of the 1950s, and including the UK.

> could you elucidate

I think you are hypersensitive to the idea that others are hypersensitive to using the term black.

I think you are so hypersensitive that you dismissed counter-evidence out of hand, without further examination.

In researching a sibling comment, I found a 1953 newspaper article saying "Britain Bans Old-Fashioned Blackboard For The New Colored Chalkboard" at https://archive.org/details/1953-04-11-1953-04-30/page/n167/... .

The reason given is "a slab of black on the wall has a tendency to create a dark, depressing, uncomfortable and gloomy atmosphere", and they will be replaced "with a 'chalkboard' in some one of nine brighter colors"

Amusingly, the Collins English Dictionary (3rd edition) defined "chalkboard" as "a U.S. and Canadian word for blackboard." at https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780004332864/page/268/mode... . Archive.org says it's from 1981 but I can't find a date in the book.

And in "An Assembly Collection" by Joan Hasler, Headteacher at Dover Grammar School for Girls, (1986) is reading 128, titled "Green Blackboards"

  The school is up-to-date.
  Proudly, the principal tells of all the improvements.
  The finest discovery, Lord, is the green blackboard.
  The scientists have studied long, they have made experiments;
  We know now that green is the ideal colour, that it doesn't tire the
    eyes, that it is quieting and relaxing.
   ....

I also found mention of a "green blackboard" in Comedians, a 1975 play by Trevor Griffiths taking place in 1970s Manchester (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedians_(play) ): "his room, on the ground floor, is smallish, about a dozen chipped and fraying desks, two dozen chairs set out in rows facing the small dais on which stands the teacher’s desk, with green blackboard unwiped from the day’s last stand beyond." - https://archive.org/details/comedians0000grif_p3e8/page/6/mo... .

So it appears at some point there were at least green blackboards in the UK.

I've seen green blackboards in UK universities, pretty rare though (and still usually called blackboards).

Stationary can become a great and not-overly-expensive hobby if you invest a little bit of effort in it. I wish I knew what I know now when I was going to school:

* If I use harder pencils("F" or "H" where the standard pencil is "HB" and softer pencils are "B"), they erase more cleanly, give more friction so I get better control, and break less. Going softer makes them dark but there's a big tradeoff involved in the other respects.

* When I was growing up gel pens were still pretty new and ballpoints were the best option for lefty ink writing in most instances. However, now pretty much everything is a hybrid with quick-dry ink. If I had to pick one all-rounder it would be the Uni 207 Plus+.

* The standard ruled filler note papers are mostly terrible - thin, with a crummy, uneven texture. This means that they can't be used with all pens effectively because roller or fountain ink will go right through. Getting anything slightly heavier and smoother(even a graph paper pad) makes for a better experience.

* To learn to hold pens and develop muscle memory, do a lot of blind contour drawing, and use the various different kids' art supplies to vary the process. The reason why this works well is because blind contours make you navigate the paper by feel alone, and the specific feel of each tool changes your approach - pencil, crayon, brush, marker, chalk all have differences in how they're best held. So you end up being very sensitive to the differences, which makes you better at drawing as well as using the most effective grasp for the task.

You can waste ours and hours to something in tikz which could probably be done in 30 minutes with SVG. Sigh.