Bret Devereaux

Friendly advice for all of the students out there: if you are not sure how to write a title (italics or quotes) or how to cite it, it is always a safe bet to just reproduce whatever your instructor did in the paper prompt. Just...just putting that one out there.

I don't know how much academic writing you've seen or papers you've graded. I've read many thousands of academic citations and the overwhelming majority were correct. I have also graded something on the order of 3,000 papers; I'd peg the 'correct citation' rate at perhaps 20%.

Going to disagree here a bit in the 'just pick one and do it' - that's my policy for introductory courses, sure. But the student's policy should always be 'conform to the expectations of the assignment.' Different fields have different citation systems, after all.

In any kind of actual writing, you don't get to just pick your register, format and style and go with it: you are expected to conform to the register, format and style of the publication. That skill - understand the demands of the assignment and perform them - is a useful one.