Misericordia has created its very own style guide, which all students will be required to use across all academic disciplines once it is officially implemented.

The style guide, which is called Misericordia University Style Key, or MUSK, will be a University-wide policy starting in the fall of 2025. According to Dylan Rusk, Vice President of University Efficiency, introducing MUSK into the curriculum serves as a way to cut out all other wasteful and unnecessary style guides, which quite often contradict each other and create confusion and anger among their users.

“Anytime we can consolidate, trim or redistribute something in order to make the University more efficient, that is our goal. By ridding the University of wasteful and unnecessary standard style guides, we can help our students, and by extension the University, become more efficient,” said Rusk.

MUSK will include a combination of guidelines from the American Psychological Association, Modern Language Association, and Chicago/Turbian style guides. MUSK was designed by the University largely in protest of the Associated Press style guide, which does not use the Oxford comma.

According to Rusk, the lack of Oxford comma use in AP style writing was the main reason why the University was inspired to develop its own style guide and ban all others.

“The lack of Oxford comma use in the AP style guide is the last straw. Although the other three style guides have their differences, at least all three require use of the Oxford comma. Every member of this administration unequivocally believes the Oxford comma should be a standard in all forms of writing,” said Rusk.

Rusk said forcing students to learn one University-wide style guide that they must use in all of their classes will save them the time and hassle of having to memorize multiple style guides.

“It seems like every academic discipline uses a different style guide. That’s stupid and not efficient. Anything that prevents efficiency at this University is at risk of being cut, and style guides are no exception,” said Rusk.

Administration may be fully on board with MUSK, but other faculty members aren’t sold on it. Dr. Melanie Choi, Professor of Mass Communications and Design, said she doesn’t understand why the University decided to unveil its own style guide.

“It doesn’t make sense. By their junior or senior year, most students are quite familiar with multiple style guides, particularly the one that is specific to their majors. How is making these students learn one more random, off-brand style guide efficient?” said Choi.

MUSK will feature heavy use of the Oxford comma, requiring it in at least one sentence per paragraph. MUSK will also include the wildly outdated practice of using double spaces after a period, a widely accepted practice when people used typewriters, which most people stopped using over 40 years ago.

Typewriters use monospaced fonts, where each character and word take up the same horizontal space, whereas computers use proportional fonts with variable character spacing. Monospaced fonts lead to the space between characters and words appearing uneven, which makes it challenging to identify sentence boundaries. Computers do not have the same problem, making single spacing after periods a standard in almost all modern style guides.

“The University is aware that double spacing after periods was a practice used due to the uneven spacing between words in typewriters. Even though computers do not have this problem, the University still believes double spacing after periods enhances readability, particularly for the overwhelming number of professors that will have to grade papers with reading glasses,” said Rusk.

Choi is perplexed by the administration’s support for both the Oxford comma and double spacing after periods.

“For an administration that is so obsessed with efficiency, it is quite puzzling that they have such an affinity for the Oxford comma and double spacing after periods. Including an extra space after a period and an unnecessary third comma in a sentence is literally the opposite of efficiency,” said Choi.