How to use this book

Read it

This should be self-explanatory, but be sure not to miss the icons on the top of the screen which enable you to:

  • Open up and close the sidebar with the table of contents in it.
  • Search within the text for a keyword.
  • Change the color scheme or font to make it easier to read.
  • Offer editorial suggestions on GitHub (see below for how this works).
  • Download a pdf version of the text for offline reading or printing.
  • Find out keyboard short cuts for navigation.

Also note the arrows on the side of the screen (or down at the bottom if you are reading on a small screen) that bring you to the next or previous pages.

Comment on it

If you are a current student in one of my Ethics classes you’ll have to do some commenting. When I used WordPress to host this text that was a built in feature. Here I am relying on a third party commenting add-on to the online version of the book. There are many ways to do this, with Disqus being one of the most popular. But we won’t be using it since they track users and push lots of advertising. Instead we’ll be using a nice tool called Hypothes.is, which you can find out all about here.

Contribute to it

If you find a mistake, don’t think it’s clear in some part, have an issue with any part of it, want something more added, etc. I encourage you to contribute. You can do this in a few ways.

  • If you have a GitHub account, you can leave a comment in the box at the end of each chapter. That creates an “issue” which others can read or add to as well.
  • You can also contribute more directly as a pull request by clicking on the “edit” button on the top menu bar – this will take you to the GitHub repository where the source material lives. There you can fork the repository, make whatever edits you want and then offer them in the form of a “pull request.” Any such requests will be subject to discussion unless they are minor issues like typos. If you really think I get things all wrong here, fork the book and make it your own! All of this assumes that you:
    • Know what “git” even is.1
    • Have an account at GitHub – which is free. And GitHub pages is a great way to get yourself a free website too!
  • Send me an email if you know me in the real world.

  1. If you don’t, it is a version control system that enables collaboration and it mostly intended for software development, but it can be used for working together on any kind of project that involves electronic files, from novels to operating systems.↩︎