Footnotes
Footnotes are abhorred by most students, yet they provide a better way to include references and tangential information than MLA style citations.
The chief objection I have to the MLA citation style is that it is distracting, with the in-text citations moving the reader away from the flow of the essay to the citation, which appears in the text itself. While this method of citing a source does convey some useful information (usually the author and the page) it is also distracting. The same information could be just as easily communicated with a footnote.
The MLA style has one significant drawback. And nothing the Modern Language Association can say can fix this disadvantage. The fact is that the MLA style of sitations does not make it possible to make tangential remarks. It prohibits the use of definitions. It avoids the insertion of helpful biographical data. And it does not allow the author to insert explanatory comments. All these functions–which are key to good writing–are prohibited (or at least strongly discouraged) by the MLA style. And yet the MLA style is the one foisted off on most students today.
One of the reasons that students abhor writing is that it is not fun. The MLA citation style takes all the fun out of writing academic papers. It makes it almost a drudgery. Instead of requiring the MLA style, teachers would be better advised to require students to learn how to use footnotes. With footnotes, the author has more creative outlets. He can insert information about a person (biographical data) that might not otherwise fit into the flow of his essay. He can also use footnotes to define terms, add extra information, and make tangential remarks.
When doing research, it is often the case that an author will amass more information that will fit into the confines of the essay. This additional information will be wasted if not included in some way. Of course it could be added in an appendix. But this is often out of context. It is usually more efficient to include the information where it is pertinent, by using a footnote or two. The footnotes thus serves as a way to include information that the author found while researching his topic. Often this information will be of interest to the reader, since it is related to the topic at hand. In this way, footnotes allow an author to show the additional material that he discovered. The MLA citation style does not allow such information to be included, and by excluding it it effectively denies the author the opportunity to share the additional material. Is that any way for a citation style to behave?