Ok, so the MLA “parenthetical style” of citing sources is very annoying; however the MLA Handbook does provide some guidance on how to use footnotes as well.  Here’s an example of citing something from an edited collection using MLA footnote style (this example lifted from a random website):

Carmen DaSilva, “Life Insurance as a Tool for Estate Planning,” Death and Taxes: Beating One of the Two Certainties in Life, ed. Jerry White (Toronto: Warwick, 1998) 57-71.

This is ok, I guess.  But what if you’re citing a book, and not an article that’s in an anthology?  Then your citation becomes:

Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, The Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

This is really quite annoying, since it forces you to run together titles in a way that’s potentially confusing, especially if both of them contain commas.  I guess this would be less of an issue if one underlined titles as MLA seems to prefer; however no one does that anymore.  Why can’t one simply insert an “in” between the titles, as Chicago Style is wise enough to do? 

MLA Style—still living the typewriter revolution.

Grrr.

is in ALL CAPS.

Well, I’m back from MLA. It was fun.  I snapped the picture above waiting for an interview.  As it turned out, I would have been well-advised to rehearse my selling points, rather than recording the strange spectacle of MLA interviewees arrayed around the periphery of the hotel courtyard, as the suites opened and closed admitting and discharging fresh PhD’s and cleaning personnel. 

We’re taking this year’s MLA as a learning experience, which indeed it was.  By this time next year, I hope to have two or three placed articles, and a couple more conferences, and generally to be a much more a serious candidate.  I’m encouraged by the response to my materials this year—we’ll have to see how things turn out next time ’round.