thecitationslut

[thecitationslut]

What a wonderfully bizarre snippet from the past. Were they all fucking drunk or something? I mean, clearly the people prescribed in the the column are drunk. But, was the writer drunk of that article 1

when they wrote this too? Inquiring minds want to know—but will never get an answer.

"Thanksgiving in a Mad House—Festival Extraordinary," The Columbus Democrat, January 12, 1839, 2. ↩︎

Sourced from the 12 January 1839 issue of The Columbus Democrat; page 2 - accessed via Chronicling America.

[thecitationslut]

Complaint Department: CMOS 18 and Why It's Both Great and Horrible

This is going to be a very tedious series that I plan on doing for the rest of this academic year about the good and the bad and the ugly revision to the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed. Now, don't get me wrong. Times—they are, indeed, my friends—a' changin' faster than Bob Dylan can whip out a harmonica.

And, besides, this is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do—criticize my favorite book of all time, CMOS. You have to understand that for people like me – people who love order rules, and structure, even when it's unnecessary – the Chicago manual of style has been a consistent beacon of Hope in the world of utter lawlessness. Oh sure, you think that grandma's walking across the street just fine but she is slightly outside of the sidewalk. In that way, grandma will destroy us all.

You see, for people like me, the 700 some odd pages of rules is a very comforting thing. So, it will be very difficult for me to dissect this book as it has not substantially changed in the course of its publication history.

Revisions to standards are commonplace. They're necessary. After all, what good is a standard that doesn't actually describe anything that it's supposed to? If things change, so must the style guidelines. However, one must be judicious when deciding when a standard changes. For example, a very small that vocal group of people can change the entire narrative about the usage of some word for example. Likewise, they could hijack a conversation over some obscure reference to something in the name of a higher authority: morality.

But even so, things definitely needed to change. I'm glad that they're finally saying that the pages of a website should be set in quotation marks and the titles of website should be in italics (agreed).

So, tell me what you think:

The problem is this: citation manuals are a blend of idealism and practicality. Yes, it's about getting everyone on the same page about things that make our lives easier and our communication more efifiecnt and clear. If we end up spending more time aruguing about the standard than we do anything else, we shouldn't change anything. It's not met the threshold of "oh, most people do it this way. So, that means we should create a standard that make sure everyone does it in the same way so that it's not confusing."

Here are some great examples of what I'm talking about, starting with the good.

The Good

Chicago Manual of Style Online, "Names, Terms, and Titles of Works."

This is great. We've all been doing it anyway, so, thank goodness.

The Bad

No me gusta tambien. Why are we making shortened citations LONGER??? I do believe this would be the citation-equivalent of the infamous No Child Left Behind Act which saw Congress seek level the playing field for all by forcing everyone towards a mediocre education. Wow, so brave. Regardless, this is dumbing down the use of ibid. specifically for the writers—certainly readers of books containing ibiid. are able to process the flow of information correctly. Instead, Chicago should prescribe the avoidance of ibid for novice and under-practiced writers, and encouraging cautiousness and paying attention instead of just dumbing it down.

There is one good things bout their instructions. After the first "full?" shortened citation you can thereafter refer to it

Chicago Manual of Style Online, "Shortened Citations Versus Ibid."

In the end. I'll live.

What do you think of the new addition?

[thecitationslut]

Why we can't have nice things...

So, this was a random article that I don't care about. However, I spent a lot of time on it becuase it appeared to have a significant impact on popoular culture in the US and UK. So, even though I don't care, it matters. SO WHY CAN'T YOU. JUST LEAVE IT ALONE RANDOM IP ADDRESSS. LIKE BRUH.

It would have been less annoying ahd they ruined something I did care about, because then it wouldn't have been for nothing lol.

[thecitationslut]

That's so Norwegian...?:

The story of a Wikipedia editor's obsession with complete references.

Photo by Geir Hval.

So, long story short, the Norwegian National Research Ethics Committees organization published a clarification document about the ethical responsibilites that were discussed during the meetings of the "Vancouver Group" in the 1970s which ultimately created the ICMJE standards for manuscript and bibliographical sources—thus formalizing the note/bibliography system structure for international use (oh, hai Wikipedia).

Above—I mean, I did it. Was it worth it? Yup. To others? Probably not. This is a screenshot of the end result of my editing to this reference, Wikipedia, s.v. "Vancouver system."

In a rather bizarre turn of that which is self-referencing, I didn't relize how diffcult it is to link to a non-English Wikipedia page inside a reference while keeping the title of the non-English page in English.

But, I did it. As they say in Norway, "Hodet mitt kan gjøre vondt, men hjertet mitt gjør det ikke." [1]

Notes

Well, that's what Google Translate says they say in Norway if you say in English, "My head may hurt but my heart does not." No doubt, that is terrible Norwegian. My deepest apologies. ↩︎

[thecitationslut]

A pleasurable clean up

The before wasn't so bad. But, the artist is ever growing in popularity especially with teens. It's important that this information be accurate and well-sourced since kids are reading it often.

THE HIDEOUS BEFORE!

I've got to say, this was one of the most relaxing Reference cleanups I've ever done. I did have to find a few sources to replace quite sketch, most-definitely-not reliable sources. But adding the archives, correcting the type of citation, and for goodness' sake, adding in the dang authors—why is this so hard people?—was so smooth and relaxing. I did end up forgetting what was technically, the first reference because the note was hiding up in the Infobox for musical artists.

I may have declared that,

"References: The entire ref section is now complete and consistent. Changed a few refs from website to news, added authors, and archive URLs. Replaced some refs to Spotify and Apple Music to news articles reporting the information needing citation." — TheCitationSlut

...but, I forgot the first reference because of a glitch with the Infobox for musical artists.

So, slightly embarrassing if not extremely productive and satisfying.

Regardless, I prsent to you, the glorious after!

THE BEAUTIFUL AFTER!!!

[thecitationslut]

Down the Rabbit Hole 0001

Okay, here we go. Let's see if we can find something to back this happy horseshit up. I mean, maybe its my minor in philosophy talking, but I'm pretty sure that the onus is on the counterclaimant to prove their case. If I say, "hey, the sky is blue," and everyone else agrees except douchebag Bill who says, "no it's not, it's green!" Well, now its his job to prove its green, not blue. Fuck off, Bill and fuck you to whomever wrote this parenthetical piece of douchenozzlery.

CAPTION: A wonderful example of the magical douchebaggery that is parenthetical commentary in reference prose. Fuck you, Bill.

I shall update eventually, if I bother to even try this one out.

[thecitationslut]

Bullshit Article 0001

So, as I am want to do, I went to Wikipedia and looked up Category:All articles lacking sources. I clicked random and boy-howdy was this a journey. First of all, as a millennial American, I'm not likely to know many GenX children's books authors. Even so, this lady—with all due respect, it's not like she has done nothing with her life—has a very faint digital footprint that would fall under the credible source category. This article had zero in-text citations, nor a functioning reference section (the references had no corresponding in-text citation. What the what?

So, this is what we started with. Wikipedia, s.v. "Ingrid Jonach," accessed 29 Oct 24. Yeah, sorry, Ingy—I have no idea who you are.

Most of the links were dead, and several of the crappy references had no link whatsoever, just vague bullshit about a newspaper article from the early 00s. Well, guess who couldn't verify most of that. The almighty archive.org had nothing, the alleged sources returned no results, etc.

This is what we left off with.