“SNOOT (n) (highly colloq) is this reviewer’s nuclear family’s nickname a clef for a really extreme usage fanatic, the sort of person whose idea of Sunday fun is to look for mistakes in Satire’s column’s prose itself. This reviewer’s family is roughly 70 percent SNOOT, which term itself derives from an acronym, with the big historical family joke being that whether S.N.O.O.T. stood for “Sprachgefuhl Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance” or “Syntax Nudniks of Our Time” depended on whether or not you were one.”

Full essay: Tense Present. Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage by David Foster Wallace.

Die Welt des Orients http://www.v-r.de/de/zeitschriften/500045/?sn=o5ojkpmo29cjc3cntm9rem4t94

To be continued …

“The SBL Handbook of Style is precisely what is needed for the next generation or two or three of scholars in our field and for everybody in the chain from author to editor to printer, including all the half steps in between. I hope that The Handbook will draw together everybody who publishes in this field to agree to adopt it as the bible for publishing scholarly works in our discipline. having a uniform standard, and a detailed exposition of the rules and the whys and the wherefores of this intricate business, will go a long way toward clarifying and simplifying the work of both writer and reader of these erudite products. I could not be more enthusiastic about a volume that I can recommend to one and all, and to which I can send innocent, ignorant, and recalcitrant authors and editors, and all the rest.” ? David Noel Freedman, Professor of History, and Chair in Hebrew Biblical Studies, University of California, San Diego

“The SBL Handbook of Style is an astonishing book, a true ?one-stop? reference for authors preparing manuscripts in biblical studies and related fields. It covers an amazing range of topics, from what every literate scholar should know (but may not) to what only the most erudite expert in an obscure subfield of the discipline would be likely to know. Do you need to know how to cite an Internet publication? Whose job it is to prepare the index and secure permissions? How to alphabetize Abraham ibn Ezra (and why)? What the abbreviation of AAeg stands for? It’s all here. This volume should substantially reduce the incidence of tears and tantrums that so often beset the process of manuscript preparation. Before long biblical scholars will wonder how we ever got along without this indispensable reference work. Every graduate program should make The SBL Handbook of Style a required text.” ? Carol A. Newsom, Professor of Old Testament, Emory University

SBL Handbook of Style
Patrick H. Alexander, Kutsko, Ernest, Decker-Lucke
ISBN156563487X
Price: $24.95

Publication Date: April, 2003

Available at the SBL Website.

William Caraher on The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World reflects on the importance of academic blogging, and how it relates to other academic writing.

He makes reference to Why Blog? / Does Blogging Matter? posted on the Ancient World Bloggers Group at the end on May, which refers to many other interesting links and comments.

• “Tools of the Trade” is a collection of basic tools for the ANE scholar.
• I collect them all in this one place so as to have them ready-to-hand (as Heidegger would have it). I hope other students will find use for them.

• Keeping my tools sharpened is (one of) my way(s) to avoid or overcome writer’s block – that dull feeling in the head, that leaden feeling in the brain. Go back to the sources – learn some more cuneiform signs, study new vocabulary, make some grammar exercises, read a text real close – your basic mental warming up. Studying a sweet hard piece of grammar usually makes the head crystal-clear, shining & sparkling new.
• “Tools of the Trade” includes online dictionaries of Sumerian, Akkadian and Hebrew; A list of Journals, Periodicals, Major Reference Works, and Series; ecstatic rantings about the SBL Handbook of Style and all matters relating to SNOOTiness & Pedantry; Online Sign Lists and Text Collections; and so on – it is very much a work in progress.

Some more tips to keep mentally fit:

• Your basic sweaty work out: use the SQ3R-Method to analyse a Mickey Mouse album. Going back to the roots and spark new ideas: review and organise source material. Formulate and answer the really silly questions that keep bugging you: Where do I find a complete list of Sumerian signs? When was the Bronze Age in Mesopotamia? Can the Bible be considered a historical source? Is it politically correct to write “God” with a capital?
• Keep a writing-&-working-diary. Going over the work already done, re-reading about earlier enthusiasms and discoveries, maybe finding new connections to what you are doing today, or noting that you already had the problem of today before, in another context – it all helps to keep mentally fit and passionate.
• “State of the Arts”: Where do I stand methodologically, theoretically, and knowledge-wise? I am a pro-feminist, mostly heterosexual woman. Do I need to bother with Feminist Theory and Gender Studies? Can I find some more basic sources? Am I up-to-date with current state of research, and if not, where am I going to find the latest books and articles on my theme? Can I formulate exactly the problem I’m researching? Why am I doing this?

If there creeps in the last question a maudling note of desperation and self-pity, try the following:

• Work, study and improve your eccentricity characteristics. According to Dr. David Weeks eccentrics are very, very creative. They have extreme degrees of curiosity, and they’re very independent-minded. Their other motivation is fairly idealistic. They want to make the world a better place, and they want to make other people happy. They have these happy obsessive preoccupations, and a wonderful, unusual sense of humor, and this gives them a significant meaning in life. And they are far healthier than most people because of that. They have very low stress. They’re not worried about conforming to the rest of society. Eccentrics use their solitude very constructively. Low stress, high happiness equates with psychological and physical health.

I remember lively the loneliness and helplessness that overwhelmed me frequently while I was writing my master thesis. By the time I finished the thing, I had convinced myself that I lacked all talent for academic writing. Nothing was less true, but I was to discover that much later in my life. What I lacked was not talent, but the right information and practice. Nobody had thought it necessary to teach us about research, or bibliographies, or how to use libraries. Worse of all, I hadn’t been writing anything at all for five long years. No written assignments were required during my university studies. I had been an extremely fluent writer in high school, turning out essays and anything written with a playful lightness that keeps astonishing me now. I tried my hand at prose and poetry, turned out rather funny comic verse – which I despised – and heavy-handed doom-laden love-poetry –which I thought was my life-work, but, looking back, was pretty abominable. I found out when I started on the actual writing for the thesis – which of course I had been postponing till the very last moment – that I had developped a remarkable lack of talent for formulating any thought into clear, precise, and correct language. Writing lively, wittely, or simply expressing my own opinions seemed like a dream from a faraway past. As a young girl I had had a particular talent for imitating styles – Thomas Mann and Socrates being among my favourites – and had indeed been unjustly accused of plagiarism several times during my school carrier. But facing the academic writing stile, I blocked like the proverbial donkey and refused to proceede.

Umberto Eco’s little book saved me from despair and hopeless muddling. I finally got some structure into the work. Also, I had the very good luck that I could work for several months in the University Library of Jerusalem, where all the important books were gathered together and easy accessible on open shelves. So I was spared the agonies and the time-consuming procedures of interlending, slow lending services („green form, pink form, white form and your book will be ready in three days“). This was only the beginning of computerised library services – which anyway just served to add to my agony, because, believe it or not, I had never previously worked with a computer.

So I managed to turn out a respectable piece of work, and learned things the hard way.

Which was Hell, rather. As I say, overwhelming feelings of insecurity, helplessness and loneliness plagued the intellectual-brain-to-be incessantly. While I’m writing this, I have started to work on my PhD and I’m having enormous fun with it. I have a clear plan in mind, know the necessary steps to take, am familiar with were to find out what - and, most of all, this is a splendid adventure. While I was constantly afraid then that I was missing some important piece of info – which of course everybody else knew everything about, and which would expose me to the world as the dummy and dilettant that I was – I am now confident, and welcome all unexpected data that jump upon me from unlikely places, and delight my heart.

Writing academic texts is fun. I would like to help you, too, to put the fun and the sense of adventure back into the academic work you have undertaken. You will find tips and tricks on my Intellectual Investigations™ website. My belief is that a good bibliography is the fundament for good, creative academic writing. You will find this approach reflected throughout my Intellectual Investigations™ website.