Writing

Jason Maston provides several pro tips for busy writers in biblical studies. Jason stresses working on projects that matter to you in your specific context.

Matthew Bates provides several pro tips for busy writers in biblical studies. Matthew stresses the need to stay focused and work on one project at a time.

Ben Blackwell provides several pro tips for busy writers in biblical studies. Ben stresses scheduling time both for writing and for rest.

Ben Blackwell provides several pro tips for busy writers in biblical studies. Ben stresses scheduling time both for writing and for rest.

Freedom interviews Ros Barber on how to nurture the focus necessary for academic and creative writing.

Daily Gleanings from Freedom about avoiding procrastination and Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s thoughts on how to foster focused work as a busy academic.

Craig Keener provides several pro tips for busy writers in biblical studies. Craig stresses scheduling writing time and working on one project at a time.

Nijay Gupta provides a number of pro tips for busy writers in biblical studies. Nijay stresses the importance of planning, organization, and persistence.

In this series, we hear from mid- and later-career scholars who have successfully created habits for productive writing in busy lives.

I’ve been grateful to be able to materially update two prior posts with additional content:

• Publication Year Ranges in Zotero: Previously, this post described how to get Zotero to produce the proper output when citing a series or multivolume work as a whole that was published over a range of years. The prior post version, however, was only able to address this for ranges of years that already had an end date. But with thanks to Brenton Wiernik on the Zotero forums, I’ve been able to update the post to describe how to get the output required if the year range doesn’t yet have an end. This is useful when citing series that are still being published (e.g., the Göttingen Septuagint).
• Get Strack and Billerbeck via Internet Archive: Previously, this post identified how to access on Internet Archive volumes 1–3 of Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck’s Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch. But these volumes represent only half of Strack and Billerbeck’s commentary. Happily, Ronald van der Bergh mentioned that he had found another page on Internet Archive that provides a combined file of volumes 1–4. I’ve now included a link in the post to this additional file. If anyone comes across volume 5 or 6, do please leave a comment with where you found them, and I’ll be happy to update the post further.

Daily Gleanings on “Paul, a New Covenant Jew” and from J. T. Ellison on productivity as a writer.

The SBL Handbook of Style doesn’t include everything. There are seven main SBL style authorities, including your school’s house style.

The 𝘚𝘉𝘓 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘵𝘺𝘭𝘦 doesn’t include everything. There are seven main SBL style authorities, starting with a publisher’s house style.

Andreas Köstenberger offers reflections and advice on writing ( 1: Why, 2: How).

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Peter Gurry extracts some preview examples of translation revisions in the NASB 2020 by comparison to the NASB 1995.

HT: Fred Sanders on Twitter

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De Gruyter Open has a number of volumes in classical and Ancient Near Eastern studies via open access.

HT: AWOL

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Freedom continues the dialog over Apple’s added rules that effectively removed much of Freedom’s functionality for new iOS users.

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Doist provides a “complete guide to deep work.” The essay is mainly geared toward summarizing the advice of Cal Newport’s Deep Work with some additional insertions from Digital Minimalism.

Both books are definitely worth reading. But Doist’s essay is a thorough crash course on the basics.

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Gleanings about expanding your research materials with “Library Extension” and the possibility of 1 Timothy’s quoting Luke.

Gleanings about resources for moving from biblical studies to theology and expanded JSTOR access for members of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Gleanings about Jewish Studies and beating distractions to write productively.

CMS17 eliminates the use of “ibid.” SBLHS2 follows suit but does have a slightly different convention for how to format notes where “ibid.” would have appeared.

At present, Zotero’s “date” field doesn’t properly handle publications made over a range of years (e.g., 1950–1960).((Header image provided by Zotero via Twitter.)) Instead of including the full range in the corresponding note or bibliography entry, only the first year of the range would be presented (e.g., 1950).

If the Range Has an End

There is, however, a workaround that depends on entering the following syntax in an item’s “extra” field: issued: [first year]/[last year]. Thus, for example, if the extra field has issued: 1950/1960, Zotero would properly output a range of publication dates (thus: “1950–1960”).

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Faithlife has launched a new journal specifically for faculty, Didaktikos, which focuses on issues related to theological education.

The Association of Theological Schools has several helpful webinars archived for new faculty.

With the release of the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, SBL style now defers to this edition in certain circumstances.

TopTracker provides a straight-forward, free time tracking utility that works on both Windows and OS X.

Cal Newport outlines the basics of how he reads when working on a project. According to Newport, “The key to my system is the pencil mark in the page corner.”

In Dan Gookin’s Word 2016 for Dummies ( affiliate disclosure; Wiley, 2016), he provides a good deal of helpful guidance for beginning Word users. One particularly helpful resource that may be of interest more broadly is his nicely condensed presentation of prefix keys for producing diacritical marks (pg. 256, reproduced below).

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The next major release of the Zotero bibliographic management system is now available. Zotero should update automatically for most users, but anyone wanting to go ahead and get the latest version can download it from Zotero’s site to install over a prior version. For discussion of what’s new in this version, see:

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One of the less-than-ideal features of using an iOS device for editing or producing documents in Biblical Studies has been the difficulty of getting standard biblical language fonts (e.g., SBL BibLit) to work on the device. There are now, however, at least a couple solutions:

1. Chris Heard has discussed how AnyFont can resolve the issue successfully and allow users to install SBL BibLit (or other fonts) onto iOS devices and use them within standard productivity tools (e.g., Pages, Word, Keynote, PowerPoint). In the App Store, AnyFont goes for $1.99.
2. On the freemium side of things, Fonteer will also do the same thing. Fonteer’s free version allows users to install up to 3 fonts. So, if you anticipate only using this number or fewer, the free version will do the job. Fonteer premium (also $1.99 via in-app purchase) allows unlimited fonts to be installed. Below is an example of Fonteer working with a draft excerpt from my essay in Explorations in Interdisciplinary Reading ( affiliate disclosure).

Writers who use OpenOffice.org and need to comply with Turabian’s Manual for Writers(7th ed.) may find this template helpful in cutting out some of the grunt work involved in setting up a Turabian-style paper in OpenOffice.org. Suggestions for improving this template are, of course, very welcome.

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