Josh Philpot

Recently I was looking over a paper I had written for a seminary class which conformed to the SBTS Style Manual. This manual is unique to SBTS and is loosely based off of the Chicago Style Manuel (Turabian). But I wanted to submit this paper to a journal, and nearly every biblical studies journal requires SBL Style, also similar to Chicago style but much different from the SBTS style. One difference, for instance, is that SBL style requires en dashes between numerals (Gen 3:14–19) while SBTS style allows for simply hyphens between numbers (Gen 3:14-19). It’s a very small difference, but I guess editors are different people.

So who wants to go through an entire research paper and change all hyphens to en dashes?! I don’t, so after two minutes of googling I found this quick solution for those who use MS Word on a PC or Mac (I happily fall into the latter category):

1. Go to “Edit” and click on “Find” or “Find and Replace” (or just Ctrl + “F” or Cmd + “F”)
2. Click on the “Replace” tab
3. In the “Find what” field type ([0-9])-([0-9])
4. In the “Replace with” field type \1–\2 (notice the en dash in between, not a hyphen)
5. Select “Use wildcards”
6. Click “Replace All”

And there you have it. If you run this script all hyphens between numerals will be replaced with en dashes. If you have hyphens between words they will remain the same. Saved me a bunch of time. Might be helpful for others. Thanks to Phil Gons for the help.

If you’re like me and you’ve abandoned Firefox in favor of the much faster Chrome, and if you frequently log bibliographic data for papers and such, then you’ll be please to note that Zotero has updated its excellent software for use in almost any web browser. The software was previously a Firefox-only extension. Now you can use it as a stand-alone application, or continue to use it within a browser. Details are here.

And, it’s free.

If you’re not familiar with Zotero, you can read my overview here and here.

Whenever I get a new computer I spend some time customizing the desktop to fit my needs and preferences. So when I recently got a new Mac for my office (thank you UofL), I added some additional features and changed a few icons. All of this is very easy to do. If you like the way mine looks I’ve provided instructions below:

Since I have the date and time on the desktop I don’t need them in the Mac menu bar, usually on the top right. These two features are live and operated by a program called Geek Tool, which is a free app in the Mac App store and which is easy to use. Mine is in Helvetica font.

The desktop image can be found here.

Instructions for setup can be found here.

I found the .Mail, Chrome, and Safari icons by doing a simple image search on Google. I personally hate the default icons for these apps, and these are more appealing to me.

In my dock I also have the Reeder app, which has a great interface for reading blogs from your Google Reader. I’ve been using it for a long time and have no complaints. I also have Accordance software for Bible study and 1Password for managing the 50+ passwords I have online.

Enjoy!

Maybe you’re like me and you have a laptop for when you’re at school and desktop for home. Fortunately, Zotero allows you to sync your sources from both computers automatically. Just follow these easy steps:

1. Create a Zotero.org account here
2. Once verified, click on the Zotero icon on your Firefox web browser, then the “actions” button, and then “preferences“
3. Click on the “Sync” tab at the top
4. Type in your username and password for Zotero.org
5. Make sure “Sync Automatically” and “Sync Attachment Files in My Library using Zotero” are both checked
6. Open your other computer and type in your log-in information in Zotero “preferences” as before
7. Close the page and restart Firefox. Click on the Zotero icon again and either wait for Zotero to begin syncing automatically, or start the process by clicking on the “Sync to Zotero Server” button.

I did this on a Mac, so it may look a little different on Windows. The steps are essentially the same. Now every time I add a new source on my laptop it will show on my desktop as well, and visa versa.

Away with you, formatting demons! Be gone!