MLA

At some place in my schooling (I suspect it was high school, but you never know), I was taught that the city of publication in an MLA-formatted works cited page should be taken from the title page of the book. That's fine. I went on my merry way.

And then I came across a title page that listed more than one city of publication. When I asked which city I should use (New York? London? Boston?) I was told "You use the one that is geographically nearest to you." Through some sort of logic, that made a certain degree of sense to me—although for the life of me, I cannot imagine how it ever did. I went on citing books using this rule.

And then it occurred to me: what if I'm in another city and I'm citing? Do I choose the city closest to me then or the city closest to me when I am at home? What if I get the text through interlibrary loan? Do I cite the city closest to me or the one closest to the lending library?

It turns out that what I was taught was spectacularly wrong (the rule is actually quite simple).

In light of this little story, I now ask you this: what is the strangest thing you've been taught about formatting citations? Was it right or wrong? How did you find out the truth?

***As an aside, this question reminds me of this episode of This American Life. The first act is about people who got a crazy idea in their heads as children and never really go back and question it—ideas that it would seem that no reasonable adult would ever think.