Why do style guides seem so arbitrary? And, why are they so discipline dependent? Why is MLA format often taught in secondary schools, and not one of the other methods? In an age where intellectual property is king and anxiety over plagiarism is high, everyone understands the need to cite sources. The problem becomes: which guide do you use? The choice appears fundamentally capricious to most people. At the end of the day, can’t a teacher, professor, editor, or publisher just be satisfied that an author cited all their sources?
One of the reasons that style manuals have this appearance of arbitrariness is that they evolved out of specific needs and concerns at particular moments. Some of these manuals evolved out of a need to archive and catalogue a wide variety of material. Other manuals arose out of a need to pare down these approaches into a more manageable format for writers. Still others have emerged out of the growth in particular academic fields over the years. The four major styles in circulation today–MLA, Chicago, APA, and Harvard–testify to this evolution over the last century. Understanding the origins of these style guides may dispel some of the mystery around their usage for writers.
Chicago Manual of Style
First published in 1906, this is possibly the earliest style manual of those in use today. The manual grew out of the need for standardization among proofreaders and editors at Chicago University Press. Because it was designed for and within a publishing house, Chicago is still the premier guide for large-scale academic publishers today. While many disciplines may use APA for periodicals, Chicago is still the go-to publishing format for monographs. It is also a major tool for archivists and librarians seeking to catalogue large amounts of work. The extensive publishing information included within citations is one of the most distinctive features of Chicago style–which makes them handy for tracking down specific editions in research libraries.
Given this background, it is unsurprising that the Chicago guide qualifies as possibly the most comprehensive style manual in circulation. Do you have a unique piece of media that you’re not sure how to cite or format properly? Because of its origins within the field of publishing, the Chicago Manual of Style probably has some suggestions. They have worked hard to keep pace with the acceleration of technology within the publishing world, releasing 17 editions over the last century (more than any other guide on this list). Many of these suggestions (with modifications) show up in later editions of other, more field-specific manuals, too. Although this comprehensiveness makes it unwieldy, Chicago still sets the standard for most of the other guides in print today.
MLA
The Modern Languages Association was formed in 1883 by academics who wished to elevate the status of the literary study of modern languages to the same level of prestige reserved for classical languages. While few people learn Latin and Greek now, fluency in these languages remained a marker of status and a requirement for entry into the major institutions of American higher education right up into the early 20th century. At the same time, a variety of scholars wished to push the boundaries of linguistic exploration to include modern languages. This movement also coincided with various movements throughout Europe and the Americas to record and catalogue elements of folk culture, language, music, and art that were rapidly disappearing under the homogenizing pressures of industrialization.
The MLA eventually published a short publishing guide in a 1951 article titled, “The MLA Style Sheet.” This was an explicit attempt at synthesizing various approaches to formatting, organization, writing, and citation. Bigger, more established manuals (like the Chicago Manual of Style) were simply too unwieldy for widespread use. In response, the number of style sheets specific to particular journals rapidly bloomed, causing confusion. So, the United States’ main literary and linguistic scholarly organization proffered their own brief guide in their journal, Publications of the Modern Languages Association. They focused on providing some measure of standardization (in the authors’ words, “a happy medium”) and on streamlining other manuals.
While the MLA Handbook has grown substantially since then, the literary and linguistic focus remains prominent. The rules for citation are much more flexible and general than in some of the other guides. Citations require only basic information rather than the comprehensive catalogue entries of either APA or Chicago. Footnotes and endnotes tend to be much more discursive, as well. The entire structure of the manual seems designed to encourage exploration and digression rather than precise attribution. The relative simplicity of the MLA approach is also one of the reasons it is used in almost every 9th grade English class in the United States. It encourages young writers to explore ideas while gently introducing the basics of attribution.
APA
At first glance, it seems odd that the major format and citation vehicle for many social and natural sciences arose out of the discipline of psychology. Much of this influence, however, is likely due to philosopher and educator William James, often described as the “father of psychology” in the United States. He introduced the study of psychology to Harvard in the late 1800s, and emphasized experimental exploration of social questions. The combination of philosophy and empiricism would continue to characterize American approaches to the discipline throughout the 20th century. Under his energetic leadership, it becomes much clearer why psychology might have provided the bridge between publishing and scientific enquiry.
The manual itself came about in the 1920s as a way to systematize the intellectual exchanges that had arisen in the late 19th century at conferences. Many of those conferences occurred under the guidance of William James and his students. The manual codified these conversations between scientists, entrepreneurs, philosophers, anthropologists, and engineers. Because psychology traverses the boundaries between science and the humanities itself, as a general manual for academic publishing the APA remains the standard–especially for periodicals. Many of the other, more discipline-specific scientific manuals can also trace their origins back to this guide.
As a manual, this guide is probably the most specifically and exclusively academic in nature. While citations include publication information (similar to Chicago), the main concern for APA is authorship. APA manuals spend extensive time and energy on the proper listing of authors for papers. This reflects the collaborative and iterative nature of much scientific and interdisciplinary research. At the same time, this makes APA particularly useful for tracing intellectual genealogies. If Chicago allows you to easily trace sources through a library, APA allows you to follow an author across publications–even ones in which they had only a minor role.
Harvard
It is probably impolite to mentally categorize a citation system associated with Harvard as a “folk methodology.” Still, that is sort of where it sits in my head. The key to Harvard style is that it doesn’t really exist. Or, at least, no style manual exists for this approach. Harvard style is, simply, the original source of partial, parenthetical citations within a manuscript. When it appears in submission guidelines for a journal, Harvard is first and foremost a call for in-text, author-date citation. The specific appearance of those parenthetical citations is then up to the specific style manual you follow (APA, etc.).
The Harvard system most likely arose out of the study of biology at Harvard in the late 1800s. At least, the first known use of a parenthetical reference can be traced to Edward Laurens Mark. While Mark himself may have copied the system from the library catalogue at Harvard, it still stands as one of the earliest attempts to systematize academic references. Until then, most scholars took a much more casual approach to appropriating, citing, and referencing research material. Not at all a bad result for a paper on garden slugs!
Where Harvard becomes confusing is in its treatment in other reference manuals. The term gets thrown around as if “Harvard format” itself is a distinct style guide, when it is not. Even some submission guidelines for periodicals will sometimes make this mistake! There do appear to be some preliminary attempts to create a more formally independent style guide on the basis of Harvard citation. Most of these, however, appear in random places on the internet, and none of them agree on a standard format. In many cases, attempts at a “Harvard guide” appear to be an ersatz combination of APA and Chicago styles. For now, Harvard remains a general approach to citation and NOT a specific style manual.
Final Thoughts
Each of these manuals is often thought of primarily as a method for “citing your sources.” Plagiarism is both watchword and boogieman of modern education and academia. One of the things that strikes me most strongly in wrapping up this blog post, though, is just how recent these systems are. Some of this reflects massive technological changes in publishing and industry that trickled into academia. More interestingly, these manuals followed in the wake of a creative and scientific explosion in research over the prior three centuries. Today, concerns of plagiarism and citation seem to override almost every other concern when it comes to academic writing. The danger frequently seems to lie less in plagiarism, however, and more in the strangling of synthesis within academic writing through over-citation. This was not always the case.
I hope that one of the major takeaways of this series is the re-placing of style manuals in their proper context. Each has particular strengths and weaknesses. Each should ultimately be regarded as a tool, and not the master of the writer. The manual was made for the writer, and not the other way around.
