Wednesday, February 05, 2020

Free printable .pdf Download of The Book of Mormon, simplified format

In this folder is my finished project, the simplified visual format of The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

I did not simplify the text or words, only the visual formatting, making it significantly easier to read. Please read the editor's note at the beginning to see exactly what I did for this. The text is still the same familiar text.

There are four different versions in the folder, and three levels of quality for each. The text is the same for all the versions.

Here's the google drive folder. Let me know if the files don't work or you can't access them. Please read on before you download or print for instructions and clarification about the different files in the folder.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lmhMW-lHkJVf8u2ubFxuEq5NrFU7y88W?usp=sharing

The levels of quality are:

"Average quality," which is designed for printing at home or viewing online.
"pdf A quality," which is an archival format that is designed for opening on any system or any device without quality loss or data scrambling.
"Commercial printing quality," which is what it says, a higher quality file that is suitable for commercial quality printing.

All four files come in each of the three quality levels, as well as in a .wpd file, which is a WordPerfect document (because it supports the parallel columns format).

The files named "The Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus" are the core file. This file has more space in the text. It's good for reading on devices or if you want to make a lot of notes. If you printed this double-sided, it would take 282 sheets of paper.

The files named "The Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus for printing large...." are optimized for printing on 8.5x11" sized papers. Printed double sided, it would take 224 sheets of paper.

The files named "The Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus for printing small compact...." are designed for printing on half-sized sheets, to make a smaller, more portable book. If you can ignore the weird margins, this can also be printed as a large print edition. Printed double-sided, it would require 145 sheets of paper.

The files named "The Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus for printing small relaxed...." are designed for printing on half-sized sheets to make a more portable book, but the font is larger than the "compact" version, and the lines aren't quite as close together. It can also double as a large print edition if you can ignore the weird margins.  Printed double-sided, it would require 241 sheets of paper.

To print the small versions on Acrobat Reader DC, open the file you want to print and then click on the printer icon. Choose "Booklet" (under Page Size and Handling) and "both sides" (under Booklet Subset). Let the range autofill, and choose Left under binding. It's counter-intuitive, but choose portrait orientation instead of landscape (it will print correctly oriented). Follow your printer's instructions to print double-sided. You should get four pages per sheet this way. Be very careful not to mix the pages up as they come out of the printer or when you cut them!. Once the entire document is printed, cut each sheet down the middle between the two pages, being careful not to reorder the sheets at all, and keeping the two halves in separate piles--left side and right side. Once all the sheets are cut, "close" the two piles like a book. This should give you an entire book in one stack, all the pages in order, ready to bind.

If you need permission from a copy shop to bind, I give you my permission.

You can also three-hole punch and put into a full-sized or half-sized ring binder.



And now for some interesting tidbits!

The word "yea" in the Book of Mormon has two meanings: "yes," and "following is a clarification, explanation, expansion, or explication of the thing I just said." Interestingly, the Nephites only use "yea," but the Lamanites distinguish between a positive and a negative clarification/expansion/etc. They use both "yea" and "nay," as you can see in AntiNephiLehi's speech.

I opted to remove both spaces and hyphens from the word AntiNephiLehi because that is how it appeared in the handwritten manuscript of the Book of Mormon.

The word "behold" is not just a filler! It is actually a narrative command, where the narrator is instructing you to notice. We like to think that "behold" means the same thing as "see," so it must function in their language the same way "see" does colloquially in ours, but it's much closer functionally to a speaker saying, "Notice that" than a couple of friends chatting and saying, "See, I didn't think so...."

In the original handwritten translated text, the word "chapter" was not followed by any numbers. Those were added later. Interestingly, ancient texts from around 600 BC did, in fact, have a word that meant "end/start of section" and was not followed by any numbers. We translate this as "chapter," but we like to add numbers. It is possible (we can't know for sure) that this is the concept that was used in the chapter breaks in the Book of Mormon. Also, the original chapter breaks were put in by the original authors and editors, so my version uses their chaptering instead of the modern chaptering out of respect for the men who wrote the book.

You will notice the original authors had an "end quote" phrase. Nephi uses "And after this manner of language did....." the speaker speak. We see similar, "And many more such things...", or "And these were the words," or other similar phrases that amount to "and thus so and so said."




Mostly, the fun little things are not super important. What is important is this book is awesome and it's true. You really can learn so much about Jesus by reading this book. I hope you enjoy the easier to read format.

Please do share!

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