Sorry for moving my post and making some of y'all look crazy. I had meant to post it in Natter originally cause that is where I've generally posted CJ's educational woes.

And all your editorial geekery makes me giddy. I'm not an editor but had to work within AMA style for college and I'm so glad I don't have to conform to any style guides anymore. But I really appreciate those who know those details.

I might talk about my struggles with citations, but at this point, it's a moo point. You know, like something a cow might say.

I actually don't have to do much in the way of fixing the references -- before I get a manuscript, some magic has already taken place to style the references and check them against MEDLINE. I still have to wrangle nonstandard references, but for the most part references are the easiest part of what I do.

Lawyers would cite:

Stephanie Lastname, I Thought This Shirt Was Clean: A Study of the Effects of Laundering on Fur Deposits in Common Fabrics, 53 Annals of Household Animal Fur Research 234-57 (2014).

Sadly, despite 29 years in the field (including law school), I had to check the Blue Book to come up with that.

before I get a manuscript, some magic has already taken place to style the references and check them against MEDLINE.

sobs

When I get the manuscript, the references have been shoved into our style, but it may or may not have been done correctly. And no one's checked squat against dick. There used to be an automated process that checked against CiteSeer, but that is no more.

As we've been having this convo, I've also been working on the flier for our holiday party. I recycled last year's, as one does, and despite re-reading it a half-dozen times, I managed to leave the 2013 on it when I emailed it to the whole company (and printed multiple copies). As you'd imagine, the person who proofreads everybody else's stuff is taking some hits on this.

Who besides me likes Fred's style the best because it capitalizes all of the title instead of just the first word - just like we were taught as kids? (I'm guessing it'll have some overlap with the people who stand with me in the pro-em-dash/space and pro-oxford comma corner).

Who besides me likes Fred's style the best because it capitalizes all of the title instead of just the first word - just like we were taught as kids?

AMA style is to only capitalize the first word (and proper nouns) in articles, but to capitalize all the words for book titles. It gets weirder with internet references, because you have to decide if a reference is equivalent to an article or a book, and capitalize accordingly.

APA is the same. And it BUGS.

Stephanie Lastname, I Thought This Shirt Was Clean: A Study of the Effects of Laundering on Fur Deposits in Common Fabrics, 53 Annals of Household Animal Fur Research 234-57 (2014).

Heh. Whereas in my head, I was all For more information, see (conref link: external)I Thought This Shirt Was Clean: A Study of the Effects of Laundering on Fur Deposits in Common Fabrics (/conref link: external) by Stephanie Lastname.

Then our content tools would throw a hissy-fit over an external link, and I'd have to go in to the schema and make the appropriate magic gestures to it renders. Then explain to one of the PMs that the information already exists, created by someone more knowledgable on the subject than us, so there's no point to my rewriting it, and hey do they have the new UI screens for me yet? No? Then stop bothering me.