Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

writing

Be More Specific Than “Points” or “Things”

by

McDill

Speakers and writers often say something like this: “My sermon has three points” or “I’d like to share four things.”

This book taught me not to do that:

Wayne McDill. 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching. 2nd ed. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006.

I took my first homiletics courses in college in the 1999–2000 school year, and the first edition of this book was one of my main textbooks.

That book has served me well over the last fifteen years. It taught me to use language precisely. [Read more…] about Be More Specific Than “Points” or “Things”

How to Grade Papers

by

Update on 5/24/2016: For the last few years I’ve been using this grading rubric for research papers, and I think it works well. It’s based on a 10-point scale (90–100 = A, 80–89 = B, etc.).

grade_rubric

* * * * * * *

Mark Boda prepared this rubric for grading written assignments:

grading

Grading papers is obviously more subjective than grading multiple choice or true/false, and Boda’s criteria help make the process a little more objective.

tocThe table is from p. 87 of this book:

Stanley E. Porter, ed. Those Who Can, Teach: Teaching as Christian Vocation. McMaster General Series 3. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013.

Just because a person earned a PhD doesn’t mean that they can teach well. (Many of us have painful personal anecdotes from our experiences as students!) [Read more…] about How to Grade Papers

MacArthur: “It’s very easy to be hard to understand”

by

From an interview of John MacArthur on “expository leadership” (watch from 11:45 to 12:35):

The money quote:

It’s very easy to be hard to understand. It only requires that you not know what you’re talking about. And if you don’t know what you’re talking about, nobody else will either.

It’s very hard to be crystal-clear because in order to be crystal-clear you have to have mastered the text. [Read more…] about MacArthur: “It’s very easy to be hard to understand”

The 2 Issues I Most Frequently Address When Copy-Editing

by

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

By nature editors hate error, but by vocation they are called to deal with it daily

by

I’ve been doing a lot copy-editing over the last seven years. This made me laugh:

By nature editors hate error, but by vocation they are called to deal with it daily. And painfully enough, it is sometimes their own.

Daniel G. Reid, “Commentaries and Commentators from a Publisher’s Perspective,” On the Writing of New Testament Commentaries: Festschrift for Grant R. Osborne on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Eckhard J. Schnabel; Texts and Editions for New Testament Study 8; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 464.

Wordsmithy

by

This pithy book is fun to read:

Wilson, Douglas. Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life. Moscow, ID: Canon, 2011. 120 pp.

Wilson gives seven pieces of advice (pp. 10–11):

  1. Know something about the world, and by this I mean the world outside of books. This might require joining the Marines, or working on an oil rig or as a hashslinger at a truck stop in Kentucky. Know what things smell like out there. If everything you write smells like a library, then your prospective audience will be limited to those who like the smell of libraries.
  2. Read. Read constantly. Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write. Read until your brain creaks. Tolkien said that his ideas sprang up from the leaf mold of his mind: your readings are the trees where your fallen leaves would come from. Mind mulch. Cognitive compost. [Read more…] about Wordsmithy

Omit Needless Words

by

I agree with Jim.

James M. Hamilton Jr., “Appreciation, Agreement, and a Few Minor Quibbles: A Response to G. K. Beale,” Midwestern Journal of Theology 10, no. 1 (2011): 67:

I want to register a stylistic complaint. Beale is prolix. It’s as though he is exclaiming, “Why should I say in three words what I can expand to ten?!” In the “Introduction” to “the little book,” E. B. White epitomizes Professor Strunk: “‘Omit needless words!’ cries the author on page 23, and into that imperative Will Strunk really put his heart and soul.” Imagine the pleasure Strunk would take eliminating words from Beale’s oeuvre. To take one example, consider the title of his second lecture, “The Inaugurated End-Time Tribulation and Its Bearing on the Church Office of Elder and on Christian Living in General.” Edwardsian in its fullness, but would not “Elders and the End-Times” have been sufficient? I love the ideas that Beale communicates, but I wonder whether he hopes to be paid on the Dickensian wage (critics of Charles Dickens complain that his books are so long because he was paid a penny a word).

How Not to Write a Book Review

by

Dan Reid explains how.

(Reid is senior editor for reference and academic books at InterVarsity Press, where he has worked since 1986.)

His first “reviewing sloth” is most significant:

The author failed to write a different sort of book, the sort of book that I prefer; and so I dislike this book.