The Miracles Journal
Preface to the Notebook and Word Edition

When I began this project, I didn’t know how far I would go with it. At first, I began putting the text into Notebook only to make it easier to read. (Notebook is a software for Macintosh computers.) I was using the second html version of the public domain edition of A Course in Miracles. There were many, seemingly arbitrarily, italicized words which were distractions and I changed them as I went along. Then there were the many typos and spelling mixed ups, a mix of British and American spellings. I started to fix those and the long-standing punctuation errors that I have wanted to fix since I read the Course the first time in the mid-1980’s. Acknowledgment is given to the possibility that some of the punctuation errors may have occurred since the document was translated into digital text, the result, most likely, of an optical character reader.

The first editor of the Course, after Helen and Bill1, has written that he erred on the side of too much punctuation rather that too little. It always seemed cumbersome to me and not quite right. But Ken Wapnick was young at the time and editing with Helen, who “inevitably fell asleep” during the editing must have been distracting.

By the time I got to the point of editing the punctuation, I was close to halfway into transferring the text into Notebook and I still I thought I was doing it for myself. At some point, I also performed some minor sentence restructuring here and there. It occurred to me that this might be useful to others. I began timidly and became more bold as I went along. I will likely go through the text again. I am quite certain that, right now, the text is free from misspellings. I am certain that it is free from italicized words (except as pull quotes in the left margin column in Notebook or below some headings in Word). I am pretty sure there are no glaring punctuation errors. But, for all the work that has gone into this project, it may still not be perfect. However, I feel sure that this editing of the punctuation will improve the readability of the Course and help more people in their understanding A Course in Miracles.

A few other notes on the form used in this text. In the original typing of the Course, no italics were used though some appeared in the first printing. It was received, written in shorthand, read aloud by one and typed on a typewriter by another in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. There were no italics, no bold on these typewriters.. Caps were used for emphasis. Occasionally, quotes were used. Sometimes a word was underlined. In the version I received, many quotes used, both single and double. As I went through the text, I retained quotes around words or phrases that were most likely emphasized in the original. The changes I made were to keep a consistency in the text. This the way I did it: Single quotes were used for words of the ego. Double quotes for words of the Voice, Jesus, or quotes from the Bible, and some of the small direct lessons that were often given in question form embedded in the text.

This is A Course In Miracles, but I have given it the title of The Miracles Journal, for two reasons. One, though titles cannot be copyrighted, the familiar acronym has been trademarked (the trademark for the acronym has since been rescinded). The other is how I put this version of the text together: in Cornell Notetaking pages, in a software program called Notebook. It lends itself to journaling or note taking as you read and study it. Everything in the file is editable by the file holder including every aspect of its appearance. Consult the software manual to explore this further.

Now, also available is this Word document edition. It is identical in content to the Notebook edition. Any change made to one edition is applied to the other edition simultaneously.

The Workbook, which is part of the Course, is not included in this file. A section header and sample blank pages are included for convenience of those who would add the Workbook lessons on their own. A separate file with the Workbook lessons is being produced. In the latest version of Notebook, 3.0, notebooks can be combined, but having the Workbook as a separate file may be more convenient. The Workbook is in progress at the time of this writing. A pre-release version in Notebook (pre-completion, actually) of the file is available on The Miracles Journal Project web site (www.fromoutoftheblue.com).

1. 1. Helen Shucman and Bill Thetford, the scribes