When Jesus was dying on the cross, He cried out “It is finished,” signifying that He had completely paid for our sins (Jn. 19:30). The Greek term that is used in that verse has been found on first century receipts, where it means “paid in full.” Given that yesterday was Good Friday, you might think that the title of this post is a reference to that event, but actually I am writing about something much more mundane.

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Performancing has an introduction to Using Mindmaps: 5 Steps to Letting Your Blog Posts Write Themselves. The article is about writing blog posts, but you can use mindmaps to organize your thoughts about anything. I used a mindmap to get my thoughts organized when I initially started working on my… Continue reading →

Recently I have been working hard on my dissertation, and I wanted to share a few thoughts about making good use of the writing tools that are available. First of all you will need three things, each of which can be done with the proper software tools: Continue reading →

The December 14 issue of the Business Common Sense newsletter includes the results of a survey that identifies the most irritating words and phrases.

To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Plain English Campaign surveyed 5,000 supporters in 70 countries. They voted on the most irritating phrase in the language. The results:

• 1. At the end of the day/li>
• 2. At this moment in time
• 3. the constant use of like as if it were a form of punctuation
• 4. With all due respect

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Writing well is hard work. I have been trying to improve my writing skills as I work on my dissertation. Dan Edelen, who is working on a novel, lists five Essential Books on Writing. I haven’t read any of the books on his list, but I might check them… Continue reading →

After a break for the holidays and the beginning of the year activities I need to get working on my dissertation again. I want to have a good method for taking notes so that they are easy to reference while I am writing. But I have been frustrated by the lack of good software for academic writing.

Maybe the problem is that not many academic types are geeks, but it shouldn’t be this difficult. With my background in computer programming I can envision the ideal software for dissertation writing because I know what is possible. It would have the following characteristics: Continue reading →

There is a new set of tools being developed to enhance Firefox for use in academic research. It will be interesting to see how this develops, and how useful it will actually be.