Maybe we should go with APA?

I can't think of a major MLA rule that I looked up and saw that it was wrong. The most common corrections that I've had to make are when doing in-text citations. I couldn't remember for a while if it was (Smith 34), (Smith. 34), or (Smith, 34). Other examples that confused me for a while were how to write a quote in an MLA paper and, of course, the works cited section has been a problem at times. How did I find out the truth? It was in English 1010 class. We all used this book called....well...I can't remember. It was a horrible book though. Started with an "H" thought (maybe the "H" stands for horrible). But it was that book that first really showed me how MLA works.

The thing that I want to discuss in this blog is this: why do we mess up on MLA in college? Shouldn't we all kind of know this by now? We have books to help us, right? So what's the deal? I believe a part of it is that we have become so used to having to use MLA that no one really checks to see if it (the thing that is written) is right. Many college students don't care about MLA format. It's ok because we expect that. But one this that is troubling is that many professor don't care too much about how the student's MLA formatting is. Another part of it is that there are so many things said and taught about MLA no one really knows what's right and what's wrong. It's anarchy! "If it looks good, it's probably right." No one wants to look up and see if it's right.

Maybe we should go to APA formatting. Why do I say this? Have you ever noticed that not many people, when having to use APA formatting, don't make as many "dumb" mistakes on their paper. Why? Because since we don't use APA as much, we are forced to go find a guide book or go online to Purdue OWL or any other website to see if we got it right. We are not familiar with it, so we look it up. Should we treat MLA like APA?! I say yes! Let's stop pretending that we all know MLA because we don't. Some MLA rules are "situational" rules meaning it depends on the situation. It could be that we pretend to know MLA because we don't want to look dumb to others. It is here when we truly look dumb. I don't pretend to know MLA by heart, so I have a style guide in my backpack and I have one in my office. Then again, the things in those style guides could be wrong. It's all a matter of double-checking......all the time.

Let's go out there and, please, let's begin treating MLA like APA.