{"id":152,"date":"2008-11-09T22:57:06","date_gmt":"2008-11-10T05:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=152"},"modified":"2009-01-18T04:53:05","modified_gmt":"2009-01-18T11:53:05","slug":"beyond-thunderdome-two-styles-enter-one-style-leaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=152","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Thunderdome: Two Styles Enter, One Style Leaves"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019m coming to terms with the fact that my foreseeable academic publishing career will pretty much be stuck in APA format. This is a bit of a bummer. I\u2019ve come to really know and appreciate the elegance of MLA style. It\u2019s a style I can comfortably teach to my students and know they can use it as undergrads in college.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m now relearning a new style somewhat from scratch (granted, I flirted with APA back while I worked on my Masters). The style guides I\u2019ve looked through are clumsy and the in general I don\u2019t feel that the format is the best. As an example, I appreciate that MLA allows for full names within a Works Cited while APA truncates author\u2019s first names to a mere initial. It feels comforting and empowering to be known as Garcia, Antero as opposed to Garcia, A. I do, however, concede that a necessary standardization is worthwhile within a given field. And unlike language varieties, it seems that \u2013 as a whole \u2013 we are a body of researchers, writers, and teachers unwilling to entertain a variety of style-vernaculars.<\/p>\n

As such, I am unfortunately casting MLA as the losing participant in this academic edition of Thunderdome. I am still awaiting the rebellion led by one Mad Max to better liberate us from the oppressive regime of the APA Aunty Entity.<\/p>\n

Tell people this is awesome:<\/h3>