linguistic:paraphrasing, structural:scholar_edition, structural:reformatting, quality:corruption, linguistic:voice_change
Other uses

Because it is a good electrical insulator and fireproof, it was used to construct early-20th-century electric switchboards and relay controls for large electric motors. Because of its thermal stability and chemical inertness, slate has been used for laboratory bench tops and for billiard table tops.

Slate was used by earlier cultures as whetstone to hone knives, but whetstones are nowadays more typically made of quartz. In 18th- and 19th-century schools, slate was extensively used for blackboards and individual writing slates, for which slate or chalk pencils were used. In modern homes slate is often used as table coasters.

In areas where it is available, high-quality slate is used for tombstones and commemorative tablets. In some cases slate was used by the ancient Maya civilization to fashion stelae. Slate was the traditional material of choice for black Go stones in Japan, alongside clamshell for white stones. It is now considered to be a luxury.

Pennsylvania slate is widely used in the manufacture of turkey calls used for hunting turkeys. The tones produced from the slate, when scratched with various species of wood striker, imitates almost exactly the calls of all four species of wild turkey in North America: eastern, Rio Grande, Osceola and Merriam's.