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I’ve thought a lot lately about The Chicago Manual of Style. I haven’t actually read it, or I would know if “The Chicago Manual of Style” was supposed to be italicized, or underlined, or to appear only in blinky purple text. I have reflected upon it though, due in large part to the University where I am a graduate student’s decision to use the aforementioned book – and no other – for all graduate-related works of a written nature.

As a layman, you may not realize that in The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), you can learn anything you would ever want to know about referencing research materials. This comes in handy if you find yourself writing research papers more than once or twice a decade. If you follow the book very closely, you will almost always cite the reference correctly, given that (a) you have spent at least seventeen hours studying the layout of the book, (b) you are in the proper section, and (c) you were, at one time, a literary prodigy. Of course, before you can begin studying the nuances of the CMS, you have to purchase the book. That will run you thirty-five dollars American.

Call me a cheap person whose lineage is spurious, irregular, inferior, or of questionable origin, but I hate to drop that sort of cash on a book I’ll use once or twice. Plus, books sort of suck, as reference materials go. You can’t search a book for keywords. Oh, I know they have that index thing at the back, but please, have you ever tried to use one of those? When I sit down to properly form my references for a research paper, I have about fifteen seconds to do it before my brain explodes out of my ears. (I’m guessing. I’ve never really done this before, but given the mind-numbing boringness of the task, I can speculate that it will end horribly.) So, flipping pages in a thirty-five dollar book looking for crap is totally out of the question.

Luckily, I have a connection to the internet right in my home. We had it put in several years ago in anticipation of just such an event. It also comes in handy now and again when someone in the family needs to watch Disney channel online because the two Disney channels on the television aren’t e-explitive-nough. Unluckily, the CMS is only available online if you sign up for the yearly subscription and pay the annual thirty dollar subscription fee. This upsets me on so many levels that it’s difficult to even put it into words, but I will try, for you.

First, they’re missing the point. I am not going to bask in the glow of the CMS. I am not going to read it with an amused smirk on my face whilst rowing across Lake Litgeek. I do not reside in CMS land, I’m just a guy in a dark suit and mask passing through and needing a place to crash for an evening or two. They do offer a 30 day trial, but even that is not sufficient. They want my email, which I hesitate to give. Also I have to do the reference thing twice – once in November, and once in March. So, you see, it’s the yearly subscription, or nothing.

I wouldn’t even care, except the outcome of my entire educational experience hinges on me being able to properly reference my sources. I could write the most brilliant paper the world has ever seen (I won’t, but I could) and I’d still fail if my references were not formatted correctly. Five years of graduate school down the drain because I don’t have access to the goods. In most situations, I would totally just wing it. I mean, I am a smart guy, and I can figure things out. All we are doing is referencing information about a book or article, how hard can that be? It can be impossible, and it is. I’d like to talk you through a scenario and see if you think maybe there is a conspiracy afoot.

I’ve just now written a style manual called “Jay’s style manual.” Tomorrow I will convince every school in the country to use it exclusively and you will all have to buy it from me. Luckily, there is only one rule so it fits on a half sheet of paper. I sell this half sheet of paper to you for two dollars American. Only a few of you buy it. Why? There is only one rule (which, by the way, is “Use lots of parenthetical references.”) Because you are so brilliant, you were able to memorize the entire style manual and you all got A’s, even though some of you had some pretty poor content.

I invested all this time in my manual and I barely made enough to cover my gambling debt, so for the second edition, I added a full page of rules. Once again, very low sales. Most of you just used the copy machine to steal my work and intellectual property and creative outputs. What’s a guy to do? Edition three has seventeen-hundred rules. Every situation you could possibly imagine is covered, and is cited differently. Now I sell a copy to every single one of you. I also make sure that none of this stuff gets online, because that would be stealing, of course.

I believe this is really what happened. And, it upsets me to think that every ounce of sweat and free time that I’ve put into my graduate program is meaningless unless I succumb to the strong-arm of the Chicagoans. (It does not escape me that this is not the first time folks from Chicago had a racket going.) Plus, it boils down to this – do we really need a separate and distinct reference format for books and magazines and journals? Can’t we just agree that all of the information can be there, and we’ll figure it out? If I italicize something, and the book says not to italicize it, is it going to disappear of the page every time you try to read it? No. The information is present, and that should be the criteria. The only explanation that makes any sense at all is the one I’ve given – they want your money, and they have devised a really clever and foolproof way to get it.

For the record, when it comes time to do my references, I’m going to the library. It’s not about the money – it’s about freedom, and democracy, and fighting against the scheming Chicago literary mob. Plus, I don’t want my wife to have to clean up the mess when my brain explodes.

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