Continuing the theme of my tip last week about using fewer buttons, here is another suggestion for how to use Microsoft Word more effectively.

Use the full-screen feature of Word to eliminate distractions. In full-screen mode, your computer won’t show you any buttons that you aren’t using, or browser windows to distract you with the allure of the Internet, or flashing icons telling you to stop your writing and check your mail. It’s about as close a computer can get to being just a piece of paper; after all, a pen and blank paper was an effective writing tool for a very long time.

Your screen will look like this: [Read more »]

How many of those buttons in Microsoft Word do you actually use? Until last night, Word on my personal computer had seventy-seven buttons in four rows. Most I only used about once per year, and I didn’t know what many of them did. That’s a lot of wasted screen real estate:

I removed any button that I wasn’t going to use every day, and managed to fit all the buttons on one row:

Now that I have a minimalist version of Word, I can see much more text, and there aren’t a bunch of distracting icons. Word is a primary tool of my trade, so it makes sense to make it as streamlined and functional as possible.

I have accepted a job at BJU’s Mack Library. I will be working as a reference librarian, and I may also help in the archives. The job starts in May, soon after Abby and I return from our honeymoon. It will be an opportunity both to serve my alma mater and to learn new skills at the same time.

It’s Bible Conference this week at Bob Jones University. I’m not able to go to as many services as I would like, and unless you’re a student or employee at BJU, you might not be able to go to any. This year, though, the Bible Conference preaching is being streamed live over the Internet. I’ll be listening at work (when possible).

In “The Departure of a Good Daemon,” Robert Herrick expresses a common problem of writers:

What can I do in poetry,
Now the good spirit’s gone from me?
Why nothing now, but lonely sit,
And over-read what I have writ.

I’m trying to acquire the historian’s skill of writing on demand. By “writing on demand,” I mean the ability to take any allotted time, whether half an hour or a whole evening, and write something substantial. Too often I set aside a few hours for writing only to squander the time arranging my notes, checking facts, reading another source, or doing unrelated tasks. [Read more »]

In many places, I have seen monuments with lists of soldiers. Many are small-town memorials, like those in Groton, Massachusetts, that list all the soldiers who fought in a certain war from a particular community. Others are national monuments, like the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, that list all the servicemen who were killed or missing in action in a particular war. These “citizen soldier” monuments form a genre distinct from those that commemorate either heroic individuals, usually commanders, or the soldier in abstract.

I wonder whether citizen-soldier monuments are unique to, or at least more prevalent in, the United States. [Read more »]

Abby and I, along with several other soon-to-be married couples, have found it difficult to find affordable housing for the next year. As far as I know, of the several places that Abby and I applied to, the apartment that we got was the only one that became available. [Read more »]

Today is Lincoln’s birthday.

He shares a birthday with many people I am at least tangentially acquainted with, including the inestimable Ezra Jack Keats, author of The Snowy Day and other Peter stories.