Nota Bene: The Essential Word Processor Suite for Academic Writing and More
During my M Div program, I was quickly becoming frustrated with Microsoft Word when it came to writing my academic papers, especially when it came to working with Greek and Hebrew assignments. I was on the hunt for a new word processor that would be tailored for academic research and writing. I found the answer in Nota Bene. I used it throughout the remainder of my M Div program and throughout my PhD program, including drafting my PhD dissertation in it. I still use Nota Bene to this day. In fact, I write all my Substack newsletters in it, including this one!
Imagine an academic paper as traveling across the ocean (and for a PhD dissertation, crossing the Pacific Ocean!). You can either travel across in a paddle boat where you have to struggle and put massive amounts of effort into reaching your destination, or you can travel across in a luxury ocean liner that is going to cater to your needs and make reaching your destination effortless so you can spend more time enjoying the journey and less time struggling to reach your destination.
That is the difference between writing an academic paper with a word processor such as Microsoft Word (the paddle boat) versus writing an academic paper with Nota Bene (a luxury ocean liner). Whereas with Microsoft Word, I had to spend massive amounts of time getting my paper formatted the way I wanted to, struggling with Greek and Hebrew fonts, and even having it crash on me during even small papers, Nota Bene made formatting my papers effortless (my professors were thrilled), and I was able to work through papers with complex Greek and Hebrew fonts and even massive papers without performance issues.
Nota Bene is a suite of tools that work together. Some of these tools are included with the purchase of Nota Bene, others are addons that can enrich your experience with Nota Bene even further.
Nota Bene is the word processor component of the suite. For those coming over from Microsoft Word or another word processor, the learning curve is not that difficult (The main toolbars are on the left-hand side, but it still has a traditional menu bar on the top The hideous “ribbon” in Microsoft Office is not there). In fact, I would encourage students to invest a few moments in learning how to use Nota Bene, since it will pay for itself in both time and the purchase in the amount of hours saved in formatting papers. Nota Bene comes out-of-the-box with all of the major academic paper templates, so with a single click, I could instantly format my paper using my school’s template without having to spend any time thinking about formatting my papers. Creating block quotes are a keystroke away, and Nota Bene makes it effortless to write a multi-chapter work (such as a PhD dissertation or book manuscript) a breeze.
Lingua is Nota Bene’s multi-language module which powers its ability to type Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Cyrillic seamlessly inside Nota Bene. I was able to effortlessly type or even paste in complex Greek and Hebrew terms in my paper and have Nota Bene handle them flawlessly (an area Microsoft Word always struggled with for me). Customers can add on the ability to use Coptic, Syria, Ugaritic, and Akkadian in Lingua.
Ibidem is Nota Bene’s citation manager included with the suite, and it is a dream to use! For starters, having a citation manager that integrates with the word processor works far superior than trying to add one on (such as attempting to use Zotereo with Microsoft Word), and where I found most citation managers to have complicated interfaces, Ibidem was a breeze to learn and use. I was able to effortlessly generate footnotes and bibliographies in my academic papers, plus take a wealth of notes linked to my bibliographic records or link PDFs to the records, quickly and easily inside Ibidem. Searching is lightning-fast, and Ibidem also supports the ability to create databases of non-bibliographic records using a tool called IbidPlus. I could not have survived my M Div or PhD program without Ibidem.
Orbis is one of Nota Bene’s included modules that really stands out from other word processors. Imagine having the ability to create your own personal “google” of all of your academic research. That is the power that Orbis offers! Orbis can index all of your Nota Bene or TXT files, or with Orbis+, all of your PDF, HTML, Word (DOC/DOCX), and RTF files, then search the contents of those files with lightning speed. During my M Div and PhD program, no matter how organized I was in my research, if I had forgotten where a particular term was in my research, I could fire up Orbis, and within seconds, zero right in on my research. Orbis is truly an essential tool for academic research, and it is only a click away inside Nota Bene.
Archiva is another module that adds additional luxury to Nota Bene by making it effortless to bring in citations into Ibidem. By default, it can search on-line libraries (over 500 are included) as well as capture citations from web pages such as JSTOR, Project Muse, EBSCO, and selected other aggregators (using your subscription to those websites), or with Archiva+, it can capture citations from existing bibliographies or ISBN numbers (including ISBN bar code scanning apps on your phone!) into Ibidem. I saved hours of typing in records into Ibidem by using the bibliography capture feature in Archiva+.
Nota Bene has also launched a new tool called Radius. I will speak more about this in its own newsletter post so I can devote more time to it and discuss the benefits of incorporating Radius into academic writing.
I could not have survived seminary without using Nota Bene to draft and format my academic papers, and it is still my preferred academic word processor. Not only is Nota Bene essential for academic writing, but it is also useful for other knowledge writers such as authors, pastors, attorneys, etc. Tools such as Orbis or Ibidem inside Nota Bene make it effortless for the author to bring in their research for their novel or their next manuscript, the attorney to draft legal briefings drawing from years of legal research, or the pastor searching all their sermons and illustrations over the years when preparing a new sermon. For anyone who is involved with regular research and writing, Nota Bene is the tool to use.
Nota Bene runs on Windows or Mac (Mac runs in its own version of CrossOver, but the Nota Bene team has done an excellent job supporting Macs. It also runs effortlessly on Intel or Apple Silicon Macs through its version of CrossOver). One can take a 30 day free trial of Nota Bene, plus all of my readers also receive a special promotion. Customers can receive 25% off for new purchases and discounts on add-on modules. Enter Group code NBNP at the top of the order form to take advantage of reduced prices. Readers can receive free Lingua and free Orbis+ when purchasing by November 11.