Since its publication in 1985, the MLA STYLE MANUAL has been the standard guide for graduate students, teachers & scholars in the humanities & for professional writers in many fields. Extensively reorganized & revised, the eagerly awaited 2nd edition contains new sections & updated guidelines on citing electronic works-including sources from the Internet. Foreword by Herbert Lindenberger Acknowledgements Scholarly Publishing Legal Issues in Scholarly Publishing Basics of Scholarly Writing Preparation of Scholarly Manuscripts Preparation of Theses & Dissertations Documentation: Preparing the List of Work Cited Documentation: Citing Sources in the Text Abbreviations Other Systems of Documentation Sources of Examples Index
Of all the books I've ever read, this is the one that most took me by surprise. I expected to treat this as a mere reference for college essay writing, but found myself returning to it for clarity on specific formatting of bibliographic details so frequently that I eventually sat down and read it cover to cover. The example content was itself interesting enough to keep me occupied, but reading the book completely gave me a much greater appreciation for the goals of the MLA style, and the rationale behind its structure, allowing me to occasionally derive the appropriate approach on new formatting issues when I didn't have the book handy. Believe it or not, this book is actually worth reading.
The first two parts of this manual, that on scholarly publishing and that on legal issues of scholarly publishing, are actually readable. The rest is best used as a reference for professionals in the humanities governed by Modern Language Association conventions. This is not a general style guide. Hold on to your high school grammar and style texts for that or purchase the University of Chicago Manual which is more extensive in its coverage of rules and conventions.
Chicago spoiled me I think. MLA has less than half the information Chicago does and it isn't as well organized. My boss and I spent half an hour trying to figure out a question about block quotes, and we ended up just following Chicago because MLA didn't tell us what to do. Lame.
Not that useful any more, but I can't seem to remove it from my reference shelf. I'd actually go on-line to the Purdue OWL Web site if I had a reference question these days.