Archive · 14 Aug 2026
Is Writing in Books Ruining Them? Readers Have Long Fought
Some people think writing in books is bad.
But writing in books is actually very old.
People have done it for about two thousand years.
Long ago, scholars wrote notes next to the words in ancient books.
Even very famous writers did this.
The poet Coleridge even invented a special word for it: "marginalia."
Some people filled a book with notes before passing it to a friend.
A famous math problem was even started by a note in a book's margin.
That note kept mathematicians busy for hundreds of years.
So writing in books has a long and interesting history.
The habit of writing in books goes back roughly two thousand years, to glosses scholars pencilled beside ancient manuscripts.
Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the word "marginalia" around 1819 and was such a compulsive annotator that friends lent him books hoping to get them back filled with his notes.
Famous figures including Jane Austen, John Adams, Mark Twain and Voltaire all wrote in books, with Twain and Adams arguing in the margins with dead authors.
Sylvia Plath's heavily annotated copy of "The Great Gatsby" is now a treasured literary artefact.
Fermat's Last Theorem began as a 1637 margin note in Diophantus's "Arithmetica," a scribble that kept mathematicians busy for 358 years.
- Who
- Readers and writers across two thousand years, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jane Austen, John Adams, Mark Twain, Voltaire, Sylvia Plath and Pierre de Fermat.
- What
- The centuries-old debate over whether writing in books ruins them, set against the long tradition of readers annotating their books.
- When
- The habit dates back roughly two thousand years; Coleridge coined "marginalia" around 1819 and Fermat wrote his margin note in 1637.
- Where
- Not specified in the article.
- Why
- Because reading was often a social act, and people filled books with notes to share with friends or to argue with authors.
- Habit
- Writing in books dates back about two thousand years
- Word coined
- Marginalia, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge around 1819
- Famous annotated item
- Sylvia Plath's copy of "The Great Gatsby"
- Fermat's note
- Written in 1637 in Diophantus's "Arithmetica"
- Mathematical problem
- Kept mathematicians busy for 358 years
- Coleridge's notes
- Published across five volumes
- Writers who annotated
- Jane Austen, John Adams, Mark Twain, Voltaire
- Medieval margins
- Filled with doodles, snails and killer rabbits