Category Archives: Style guide/s

MLA9 already – and already mixed feelings

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it does not seem long since the Modern Language Association published its 8th edition (MLA8) – but I see that it was released as much as 5 years ago, April 2016. Now, next month sees publication of MLA9, the 9th edition of the MLA Handbook – and yesterday MLA hosted a webinar preview of the new edition.

I well remember my excitement and delight, as that edition seemed revolutionary (as I wrote in MLA8 – new edition of MLA Handbook and Back to basics – MLA8 revisited).  Instead of presenting lots of rules and variations from and exceptions to the rules in an attempt to include all types of known (and unknown) source, format, medium, platform and more, we were given a template to follow with which we could build the references which informed our lists of Works Cited, while still being faithful to the rationale and the principles of academic referencing and supporting our readers.  This was empowering, it was liberating.

The principles of MLA8 citation and referencing are Continue reading →

Stylistically speaking

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A pedant myself, I was naturally attracted to an article by Elizabeth Ribbans in the Guardian this week: the headline read COVID or Covid? The comfort of pedantry at a time of national crisis.

Ribbans is the newspaper’s readers’ editor; her team is responsible for fact-checking, correcting copy and dealing with readers’ questions, comments and complaints. The question which inspired the headline was from a medical specialist who asked why the Guardian insisted on using Covid-19 when the medical profession uses COVID-19.

Ribbans explains that it is the Guardian‘s practice, along with many if not most British newspapers,

to use uppercase for abbreviations that are written and spoken as a collection of letters, such as BBC, IMF and NHS, whereas acronyms pronounced as words go upper and lower, eg Nasa, Unicef and, now, Covid-19.

(This is, incidentally, a practice I abhor. “Nasa” and “Unicef” are not words even if their abbreviations/ acronyms can be pronounced; when I see them spelled as “NASA” and “UNICEF” I am aware of the full title of the body and its responsibilities, just as I am aware of who the BBC, IMF and NHS are and what they do. Continue reading →