Learning from interns: Style matters

[michelleclark]

Here at Macmillan, we've been blessed with several excellent summer interns in our Boston office, and it's been a pleasure to get to know them and their habits as writers and as young professionals. Paola Garcia-Muniz, a recent Fairfield University grad, recalls that when she was in high school, she wrote in MLA style using "the basic formula: an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion." She discovered that the rules are looser in college, the expectations less formulaic. She learned how to be agile with style systems, too. According to Paola: "[My] handbook helped me adjust to the new expectations that came with the freedom of college writing. My freshman year, I didn’t just have to learn about APA style for my first psychology course, I also had to learn how to use Chicago style for my History 10 course while writing my English composition papers in MLA style format. The handbook helped make sure that I wouldn’t mix and match style rules." 

This summer Paola is strengthening her writing and editorial chops by helping us to understand the changes in the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition. We'll use her analysis to help us adapt our humanities handbooks and textbooks with the new guidelines. Lucky us! 

  < I'm Paola. Ask me about Chicago style.