Leo Wong (@LeoTheLess)

John Simon on calvary and cavalry. Barzun gave me a number of invaluable pointers about writing, the most astonishing of which was the suggestion that I refrain from using in the same passage the words "regiment" and "calvary," because, in that context, readers were sure to misread the latter as "cavalry." This struck me as a bit farfetched at the time; still, I dutifully changed "calvary" to "golgotha." ... I, for one, am very glad, in retrospect, that Barzun made me change that "calvary" to "golgotha." It was, to use a lovely phrase of Barzun's about the effect of his good friend and colleague Lionel Trilling on his students, "a reshaping of the mind, not an indoctrination." That one could use such foresight and courtesy to forestall misreading—to make some hypothetical reader's sailing a little smoother—is something that would never have occurred to me. Now it is something I can never forget. —John Simon, Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline, 1980 The soldiers take Jesus away to be crucified. They put a cross on his shoulders and march him to the Place of the Skull, called Golgotha in Aramaic and Calvaria in Latin. —Gospel Scenes, Sc. 87.