What kind of person asks for this for her birthday?

And what kind of friend actually gets it for her?


I have an expert on MLA citation as my Guest Blogger today!

Val: So, first things first. Thanks again for being my guest blogger today! Would you like to tell our reader about yourself and how you’re associated with String of Lights and/or this topic you’re writing about or should I?

Rower: I taught the String of Lights author (almost) everything she knows about MLA.

Val: Do you have a blog? Would you like to put a link to it here?

Rower: I do, but no thanks.

Val: What takes up most of your day?

Rower: Work, learning, reading String of Lights

Val: What kind of music do you listen to?

Rower: All kinds—especially partial to classical orchestral and piano music.

Val: What question would you have liked me to ask you? And what would your answer be?

Rower: Question: If you were a blog, what would your theme (skin) be?
Answer: Something with boats and water.

Perfecto. On to your post

MLA. Three letters that strike terror into the hearts of students everywhere—or at least bring out the question “Why bother?” Let me tell you why you, too, should hope students everywhere learn to bother.

MLA is the Modern Language Association which, among other things, maintains a style guide. MLA is based on the importance of words, so its internal logic is about getting readers to the original text as quickly as possible. When reading a paper following MLA style, citations occur in the text parenthetically and readers interested in following up have the first item in the works cited entry (author usually) and the page number (or paragraph number) from which the quote or paraphrase is taken.

Now you may be thinking, “That’s swell if you are a nerd and have nothing better to do than look up people’s quotes.” MLA teaches more than good housekeeping in the writing of papers. It teaches how to follow a set of guidelines. Standard operating procedures. It teaches attention to detail. Ever have the tire place forget to tighten the lug nuts? Not cool, is it? Guarantee that tech didn’t bother to learn MLA. It teaches that if you want to be trusted and taken seriously, you must adhere to the standards of your area. Most importantly, MLA recognizes that words still do mean things and that words are important enough to check.

* Interestingly enough, personal webpages are covered in the 6th Edition, as are posts to bulletin boards, but blogs are not. I've made an executive decision to italicize the title of the entire blog. I'd set the individual posts off in quotation marks " " if I were going to cite them in a We're Excited Works Cited page.