MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers by Joseph Gibaldi (review)

Sample citations in the MLA Handbook confer a mode ofcelebrity on the authors cited. Citations come and go, but no one who is familiar with previous editions of the MLA Handbook will be surprised to hear that it continues its long life as an exemplary work in its new edition. The Handbook is sensible, clear, cogent, and as readable as a manual can be. The book offers abundant cross-references and an index. Explanations make some conventions less arbitrary than others and than they appear: for instance scientific systems of documentation emphasize dates more than MLA style does because research in the humanities has a longer shelf life than in the sciences (143), and the hanging indentations in the list of works cited make it easy to use an alphabetized list (145). As the design on the cover of the sixth edition suggests, while the angle is different, the pattern remains familiar. The sixth edition emphasizes the content of student writing more than its predecessors did, although it still privileges form, as it should. The rules haven’t changed much. The sixth edition restricts to ambiguous cases the direction in the fifth to bracket the dots that signify an ellipsis in a quotation to distinguish them from authorial ellipsis (117-118). Gibaldi points out that while conventions ofboth publication and citation have been well established for a long time as far as printed materials are concerned, those for electronic materials are uncertain and fluid (207-208). His guidelines for electronic sources are detailed, but necessarily provisional, and their tone is less authoritative than that of the earlier sections, for instance when he discusses “A Work in an Indeterminate Medium” (230). The font of the sample entries now suggests a printer, rather than a typewriter. One of the most valuable sections of the long first chapter on research and writing emphasizes the importance of evaluating sources and provides criteria (4 1-45). Gibaldi explains the difference between a site that is peer-reviewed and one that is self-published (41-42). Now that the web is the first and sometimes the only resource to which many students turn, they need the information here more than they probably realize. Gibaldi has added long sections, like those in many textbooks, on such subjects as choosing a topic and working through successive drafts; a summary follows each section. Writing however is a profoundly personal activity, and we all have to find our own ways of doing it, ways that may vary for each writer from text to text and project to project, as Gibaldi recognizes and takes into account