Day 110 - Actually Attempt to do Citations Correctly

Date: April 26th, 2010

My final exam for Critical Race Theory is a roughly 25 page paper on the use of anonymity in hate speech. Its incredibly interesting and, quite frankly, now that the paper is done, I will probably keep researching the topic. I've been through various research phases in my life. I had the 'learn about all the things Bush has done wrong' phase and then a 'learn about the problems with large bank monopolies' phase and then a 'twilight' phase. What? It was a fun read. Shut up.

As much as I like research (and the occasional teen romance), I have always hated citations with the burning passion of a thousand suns. Don't get me wrong - I understand the need to cite one's work. It's important that people be able to make sure you're not a dirty, plagiarizing liar. I totally get it. What I don't understand is why this thing has to be in italics, that thing has to be underlined and this other thing changes the positioning of a comma in relation to quotation marks. We have reached "who cares" stage.

So, here's the thing.  I hesitate to admit this because it may or may not anger 90% of my previous teachers and professors.  I have literally never tried to get citations correct before.  Not even on my thesis.  On the vast majority of my papers, I've found out that I can only lose 1-3% off the grade for doing citations wrong.  I've also found that getting even one citation wrong triggers that 1-3% point loss.  Generally speaking I've just thrown my hands up, typed in random information about the source I used and called it a day.  If anyone were to comb through my old term papers, they'd find that I had a defined italics phase, a pronounced underline period and the conspicuous absence of a bold phase.  I will not stoop to bold.  I'm not that kind of girl.
 
In any case, for the most part, I have had literally no clue what I was doing.  Someone in middle school told me people like knowing the publisher and publication city of books.  So I started throwing those in there.  Sometimes I listed the year, sometimes not.  I'm a citation-free spirit.  There's a reason for that.  If there were one style for citations, I might buy the hype, but as much as I'm anti-monopoly when it comes to banks - I am very pro-monopoly when it comes to citation styles.  We have way too much of a stylistic free market for my taste.  My little rebellion is to create my own system and call it "screw it, I'd rather watch TV".

Seriously though.  How much do I despise citations - let me count the ways.

ACS Style
The Associated Press Style
The Chicago Manual of Style
Turabian Style
The Elements of Style
The Elements of Typographic Style (the spinoff... like Frasier was to Cheers)
ISO 690
MRHA Style Guide
MLA Handbook
MLA Style Manual
The New York Times Manual
The Oxford Guide to Style (New Hart's Rules)
The Publication Manual of the APA
Stephanus Pagination
Bekker Numbers
Biblical Citation
Shakespearean Citation
The Style Manual for Political Science
ASA Style
The Columbia Style
Harvard Referencing
The McGill Guide
The American Institute of Physics Style
AMS-LaTeX
BibTeX
The Vancouver System
The ASME Style
ICMJE Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals
IEEE Style
Pechenik Style
American Anthropological Association Style

AND OF COURSE: Bluebook and ALWD Citation Manual
The bane of my legal existence.

Seriously.  Granted I hate about 2/3 of that list in solidarity only, but the point remains.  Its time to streamline, people.

I thought it might be a nice change of pace to actually try to do citations properly though.  You know, for kicks.  So when I finished the paper itself (you know, the important part), I went online and looked up MLA formatting.  Then I went through and did my darndest to get each and every one of the citations properly formatted.  I'm about 99% sure that I got somewhere around half of them wrong.  I definitely had a "thank goodness I'm graded on the content of the paper" moment.  It added a solid hour to my paper writing to go through and make sure the citations were correct.  It was an hour I can't get back.

As much as I still roll my eyes and sigh like a teenager at the thought of citations, I do get the sense that I should know how to do them a little better.  Not because I think they're useful.  They aren't.  I'm sorry.  I know there should be a larger learning experience here, but there just isn't.  Having that many different style systems with all their silly little intricacies just doesn't make sense to me.  Here's how I would do it if it were up to me.

Book title, Author's name or names, ISBN, page number.

Check it - ISBN's and Google are your friend.  ISBNs are look-up-able and once you confirm my source, we both done our jobs.  As for other sources - they should have ISBNs.  So.  Librarians of America.  Get on that.  (Kidding - I swear).  I do understand there needs to be a system, but this obsession with tabs, italics, underlines and comma placement has got to go.  On the bright side - I got my paper done on time and I got my citations done vaguely close to properly for once.  It was a good day.