College Style Sheet 3rd ed

Susan Minsos is a sessional instructor of English at the University of
Alberta.

Many English students will appreciate this handy book of current
documentary conventions that includes, for example, instructions on how
to use single quotations and how to refer to indirect sources and
unsigned articles. All the neophyte needs to know about documentation
lies within.

The introduction advises students that “this style guide
incorporates, with few modifications, the current (1988) documentation
system defined by the Modern Language Association (MLA) which advocates
text references and a list of works cited for the acknowledgment of
sources in essay writing.” The MLA’s adoption of parenthetical
references for documentation makes life so easy and enjoyable for
essay-writing students and researchers that one wonders whether History
and Political Science’s preference for the complicated and repetitive
Turabian manifests in these disciplines the shadow of a sadistic streak.

I have two small reservations about this style sheet. The “Types of
Essays” section sends mixed signals to students, because Furberg and
Hopkins confuse an essay’s structure with its fundamental type.
Finally, the style sheet’s own punctuation, with its abundance of
commas, will perplex avid and observant magazine and newspaper readers,
since modern media publications have markedly reduced their reliance on
the comma. In this area, most likely, the industry leads the way.