APA Is For Assholes

I recently started working on getting my Masters. Why am I doing this? Mostly because work will pay for it. I do not have much ambition that it will ever come in handy, but since all I have to do is take care of the books and get good grades, it seems stupid to pass up the opportunity. Through my first couple of classes, I have basically only been docked for not having proper formatting within my papers. It is absolutely ridiculous that we are still worried about formatting. Language is constantly changing, but the form of proper academic writing must stay the same for all eternity. I am forced to use APA in everything I do. What does APA stand for? Don't know, don't care. I just know that all instructors make me use it, and it is total bullshit.

There are so many stupid rules that make absolutely no sense. In academic writing, contractions are not allowed. It doesn’t make any sense, ah, excuse me, it does not make any sense to have this rule, but some asshole decided that contractions aren’t awesome. Trust me, they are totally awesome.

A paragraph is supposed to consist of like four or five sentences. I can’t remember which one, but it is still a stupid rule. If I want to make a point by having my entire paragraph consist of one word, then I should be able to do it. In fact, I should be able to make up a word for my one-word paragraph.

KA-BLOW!

But the academics love APA, so I can't have totally badass one-word paragraphs.

The worst of these offenders is insistence on APA citations. On Black Heart Gold Pants, they have a daily article called “It’s Not Plagiarism If You Link To It.” That sentence makes 100% sense. APA formatting makes zero sense. It’s an archaic practice that is no longer useful to the current generation. 100 years ago, sure, I could see the advantage, but the Internet, like it has done to so many other things (cough, newspapers, cough), has made proper formatting obsolete. It’s time to take APA out back and shoot it in its fucking face. Just throw a link up and save everyone a bunch of time.

Why is this still being used? Because most "academics" grew up with APA formatting, and now they are forcing it on everyone around them. If you stress the importance of APA, you are an asshole. If you disagree, I've got only one thing left to say to you...

KA-BLOW!