Abolish the MLA
Students of our fine American universities: unite and rebel against the Modern Language Association! The MLA has taken over our English departments and brainwashed our professors. We must finally throw off the shackles of grade-school style pedagogy and reclaim the natural liberties of writers!
I, John Hewitt, hereby demand the following:
* The right to deviate from grammatical custom whenever I see it necessary. Grammatical customs are nothing but that: customs. Not laws. These rights include but are not limited to:
* The right to begin a sentence with “and”
* The right to fragments
* The right to capitalize entire words for emphasis
* And the right to any phrase that feels natural to the English-speaking tongue.
* The right to cite our sources reasonably – by our own devices. If the professor actually looks up a source and she cannot find it, that is what makes it a bad citation. The fact that an extra space is included or a period is too wide does not.
* The right to format our own parenthetical citation, and include commas if we wish.
* The right to make up new words when necessary. Shakespeare did it; Dr. Seuss did it. Sometimes new ideas need new words. The English vocabulary is not closed, and no one has the right to say what is and is not a word.
* The right to name, date and title our work however we wish. If the professor doesn’t like it, I have no problem letting him reformat it however he wishes.
MLA style is anything but. Its thousands of rules are ponderous and ludicrously convoluted. To the teachers and professors who do not like the prospect of readjusting to a new format for each essay they read: I suggest to them a career in the DMV. There they will be paid the same for their complaints.
Homogeneity will never be a virtue in any art, including writing. If consistency were truly important the MLA wouldn’t sell us a new set of rules every year. In changing the rules so often they admit that things can be done differently – so let’s do things differently. Let us abandon the MLA forever, and decide for ourselves the best way to present our own ideas.
Signed,
John Hewitt
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Bringing It On
To whom this may concern:
I realize that there are a lot of things going on in the world and at the University. However, it would be nice to receive some support from our peers at the university.
The VCU All-Girl Cheerleading Squad will be competitng at NCA in April 2005 for the first time in university history. For those who are unfamiliar with the cheerleading world, this is equivalent to going to the Final Four. It’s a very big deal, and we plan to win our division. Please show us some support by making the student body aware of our hard earned accomplishment and wish us good luck!
Sincerely,
The VCU 2005
All-Girl Cheerleading Squad