Friday, March 31, 2006

A Pox on You, Chicago Manual of Style!

I am in the process of dealing with the stupid translation of my article into the stupid form that is Chicago Style.

Luckily, I had to use this stupid style with my dissertation, and apparently it's one of those "just like riding a bike" things that comes back to one. Problematically, I've never been a great bike-rider.

I have successfully done six (6) of the approximately 4,000 notes that this style will require of me. I want to punch (or kill) someone (myself? the publisher? who?).

Be prepared for periodic updates of my pain, as I cannot sustain this kind of work for longer than 20 minutes at a stretch.

9 comments:

Bewildered Academic said...

Yeek...that sounds rough. Do you have EndNote bibliographic software? You can easily reformat footnotes snd bibliography once you've inputted sources into the database. Good luck!

Dr. Crazy said...

You know, I should probably get endnote. In my discipline people don't rely on it the way that people in the sciences/social sciences do, and the only time I ever think of it is when I'm in the predicament I'm in right now. I am however, moving much more quickly now that I've gotten going, and it turns out that my anal-retentiveness in terms of citation and note-taking really does make my life easier. Yay for obsessive-compulsive researching habits!

helenesch said...

I hope you've at least got some good music playing while you slog through this...

Dr. Crazy said...

Well, now that you mention it.... I shall post what I've been listening to as I work my little fingers to the bone (I've been taking a break to record each song as it changes.)

Dr. Crazy said...

Ancarett, there's always a weirdo in the bunch :) But maybe Chicago is preferable to APA? I wouldn't know. I live in the world of MLA style which (to me) is entirely rational. My problem with Chicago is that the slight differences just don't make sense to me, and having a note for every damned citation means that the article is about a thousand times longer than it would be in MLA style. Grrrr.

Liz said...

I prefer APA. I don't like Chicago/Turabian. I haven't had to use MLA in many years, so I have no opinion of it.

Jenny Davidson said...

I will confess my own adoration for Chicago style, I sort of hate MLA style....

Another Damned Medievalist said...

I love Chicago -- it's the only acceptable style for the kind of work I do. After all, MLA doesn't allow the kind of discussion that Chicago does -- and when you're using your own translations or your translation differs from someone elses but, while crucial to the main point, is not in and of itself the point?? where else are you going to put the original text so your audience knows what you're talking about?

Dr. Crazy said...

What you say, ADM, makes sense, but what I don't quite get is why MLA style doesn't allow you to do what you need to do. They allow content notes in MLA style, so it seems to me (although, admittedly, I'm sure I need notes in a different way than you do) that one can use in-text citation for all of the things that require no additional comment (in my work, that's the majority of them) and use notes only when there is a note to the content? As a reader I'm frustrated by Chicago style because I'm constantly flipping back and forth and often all I find are citations. I'm much more a fan of a works cited for all of the major citation info, in-text citation for page references, and notes only for things that are supplementary to the article, so that when I go to look at a note I know that it's something with actual content to review.

At any rate, enough commenting - I need to get to work and finish typing in changes!