Cite for Sore Eyes
Monday, January 18th, 2010 01:22 amI am currently revising my book on how to write a term paper so as to bring the chapter on citation up to date with 6th edition APA and 7th edition MLA (for the benefit of non-academics: this translates as PITA). Citation formats are to academics what the technical specifications of the Enterprise are to Trekkies, i.e., vitally important to members of your group, and totally pointless to everyone else. People actually have heated arguments about whether MLA (Modern Languages Association) is better than CMS (Chicago Manual of Style), which is silly since Chicago has loads of class and MLA is the polyester leisure suit of academic style because normal people don't give a dingo's kidney about this kind of thing. After wading through the details of APA formatting for miscellaneous non-print sources, I'm starting to move from being an academic to being a normal person: I want to cross out "For an episode of a television series, use the following format" and write "For Christ's sake, they can look it up on Wikipedia like everyone else!"