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This article considers the use of pen names by a group of women who were just beginning to bravely venture into print in local newspapers during the early years of the twentieth century. It asks whether their use of noms de plume was purely to conceal their identities or their sex from their readership or whether such pen names were used for other purposes, for example, to construct a civic identity. Such an identity, it is argued, was then used to justify the writers' intrusion into the public sphere of newspaper correspondence and debate. It also considers how women's use of pen names changed over time, and the different factors that impacted on a woman's choice of nomenclature in her public correspondence to the newspapers. The study investigates the choice of pen names made by women letter-writers to two daily newspapers in Scotland between 1900 and 1918. While the use of pen names was frequent in the first part of the period, it died away almost completely during the early years of the First World War, only to recur after 1916. it is thus also suggested that a distinction can be made between reactive and proactive letters to the newspapers; the latter requiring the correspondent's identity to be made public while writers of letters reacting to other letters or editorial might feel more secure behind the cover of a nom de plume.