I’m 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’ve come to really know and appreciate the elegance of MLA style. It’s a style I can comfortably teach to my students and know they can use it as undergrads in college.

I’m now relearning a new style somewhat from scratch (granted, I flirted with APA back while I worked on my Masters). The style guides I’ve looked through are clumsy and the in general I don’t 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’s 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 – as a whole – we are a body of researchers, writers, and teachers unwilling to entertain a variety of style-vernaculars.

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.