Books at a Glance is an online service that just launched this month. Fred Zaspel, the editor, has put together a team of book review editors and a board of reference (on which I’m happy to serve). [Read more…] about Books at a Glance
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How to Make Your Mac Read Text Aloud
Did you know that your Mac can read text aloud? The feature is called “Text to Speech.”
I’ve been using it in three ways:
- Listen to a relatively long blog post or email while doing something else that allows me to multitask.
- Listen to something I’m copy-editing (whether it’s something that I or someone else wrote). This helps pace me, and it helps me spot typos. Sometimes my ears hear errors that my eyes miss.
- Listen to an English Bible translation that I don’t already own as an audio-Bible. (On listening to audio-Bibles, see here and here.) This is especially helpful when you want to listen to a variety of English translations while looking at a particular passage in Greek or Hebrew.
So how do you do this on a Mac?
1. Open “System Preferences,” and select “Dictation & Speech.”
Update on 11/7/2016: macOS Sierra does not have a “Dictation & Speech” icon. For Dictation, select Keyboard. For Speech, select, Accessibility.
Top Posts in 2013
These posts from 2013 received the most views this year:
- Diabolical Ventriloquism: A 1-Sentence Summary of Each of Screwtape’s Letters
- How should churches relate to others with same-sex attractions? Read Peter Hubbard.
- 3 Reasons I Don’t Enthusiastically Recommend the History Channel’s “The Bible: The Epic Miniseries”
- Wayne Grudem on the Jason Bourne Films
- Piper Illustrates for Children How Faith Glorifies God
- Keller and Carson: Greco-Roman Slavery ≠ Race-Based Slavery
- Don Whitney: How Can I Be Sure I’m a Christian?
- Top 10 Tips for Being Clearer
- How a Recent Thesis Defines the Glory of God
- 6 Discontinuities between the Old and New Covenants
- Carson: The most painful things I’ve ever borne are betrayals by Christian friends
- How to Listen on Double Speed with an iPhone or iPod
- How Reliable Is Your Memory? 3 Practical Lessons
- Murray Harris’s 6-Page Expanded Paraphrase of Colossians
- The Best Book on Sexual Purity
- MacArthur: “It’s very easy to be hard to understand”
- Ben Witherington: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away” is “not good theology”
- What Is the Message of Each Book of the Bible?
- Brothers, We Are Not Professionals
- How to Disagree with Other Christians about Disputable Matters
- Exulting in Harry Potter
- How Should Parents Discipline Their Children? Is Spanking Wrong?
- An Unmistakable Sign of a Legalistic Spirit
- We’re Moving to Minneapolis: 5 Reasons We’re Excited to Serve at Bethlehem College & Seminary
- Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts
- Why You Should Not Be Dogmatic about All of Your Convictions: Lloyd-Jones on Silk Stockings, Baths, Radios, and More
- The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson
- Why It’s Important to Understand Direct vs. Mitigated Speech
- The 2 Issues I Most Frequently Address When Copy-Editing
These 20 posts from 2012 received the most views in 2012 (my favorite is #20):
- John Frame’s Advice: 30 Suggestions for Theological Students and Young Theologians
- 3 Ways to Nourish and Cherish Your Wife: Practical Advice C. J. Mahaney Would Give You If He Met with You at Starbucks
- Why People Hate the Sermon on the Mount
- Don Carson’s Three Secrets of Productivity and Godly Efficiency
- HCSB vs. ESV vs. NIV
- Ten Narnia Resources
- Must a Wife Always Follow Her Husband’s Leadership?
- Videos of All 44 Stories in The Jesus Storybook Bible
- Ten Resources for Enjoying Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
- Covenant Eyes
- My New Book: From Typology to Doxology
- 22 Mistakes Pastors Make in Practicing Church Discipline
- Progressive Covenantalism: A Via Media between Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism
- This Is How We Pray for Our Children
- A New Systematic Theology by an Eccentric Genius
- Falsifying Views on the Extent of the Atonement
- Limited Atonement in the Bible, Doctrine, History, and Ministry
- Tom Schreiner’s Top Three Commentaries on Each of Paul’s Letters
- Critiquing William Webb’s Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
- Announcing Emma Elyse Naselli
These ten posts from 2011 received the most views in 2011:
- Why John Piper Doesn’t Own a TV
- iPad Resources
- Courageous
- How to Manipulate People to Make (Fake) Professions of Faith
- Is C. S. Lewis the Patron Saint of American Evangelicalism?
- Bible Memory for Young Children
- Evernote or OneNote?
- The Importance of Dignified Translations
- The Myth of Mutual Submission
- Mirror Reading
The Message and Influence of Deuteronomy: A Festschrift for Dan Block
Colleagues and former students of Dan Block surprised him with this Festschrift last month during a session at the Evangelical Theological Society in Baltimore:
Jason S. DeRouchie, Jason Gile, and Kenneth J. Turner, eds. For Our Good Always: Studies on the Message and Influence of Deuteronomy in Honor of Daniel I. Block. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013. xxxvi + 572 pp.
You can read a two-paragraph description of the book at Eisenbraun’s site. [Read more…] about The Message and Influence of Deuteronomy: A Festschrift for Dan Block
Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts
When I arrived at my BCS office yesterday to move my print library from boxes to bookcases, I noticed this playful sign outside the door:
I love it!
I imagined that title four years ago.
Update (November 2022):
The 2 Issues I Most Frequently Address When Copy-Editing
In the last eight years or so, I’ve done a fair bit of copy-editing. For example, I’ve edited some books and copy-edited every issue of Themelios since TGC took over that journal in 2008. For the last three years I’ve been editing a massive forthcoming project that will probably be about 1 million words (more on that later).
Here’s my basic philosophy of writing in six words: Omit needless words, and be clear (HT: Strunk, Zinsser, and Williams). There’s a lot more to good writing than that, of course, but it’s hard to communicate well when your writing is cluttered and convoluted.
So I most frequently address two issues when copy-editing: [Read more…] about The 2 Issues I Most Frequently Address When Copy-Editing
Samson’s Strength : His Hair :: Paul Tripp’s Wisdom : His Mustache
Ryan Kelly asks Paul Tripp a profound question (26:28–28:46):
(Tripp’s mustache has its own Twitter account.)
Related:
A Funny Parenting Book by @HonestToddler (33 Excerpts)
Bunmi Laditan. The Honest Toddler: A Child’s Guide to Parenting. New York: Scribner, 2013.
I follow @HonestToddler on Twitter because it’s so entertaining, especially since my wife and I care for three little children.
The central theme in all the tweets and throughout the book is that [Read more…] about A Funny Parenting Book by @HonestToddler (33 Excerpts)