HOW TO CITE? In the good old days, when an author in a scholarly publication cited other scholarly publications, he did so in footnotes, listing author, title, year, generally also the place of publication, sometimes the publisher too, or the necessary journal data if the reference was to a journal article. Then times have changed, footnotes became endnotes, some decades ago however all was swept
... [Show full abstract] away by the new system, the (author, year) reference within the main text, with a bibliography at the end. Those abhorred by the system form a silent minority – but let them for once have a voice. And of course let the adherents of the system formulate their arguments. On Nov. 8, 2019, the Committee for Communication and Media Theory, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, has organized a conference under the title *The glory and misery of the (author, year) reference style*. The conference was moderated by Petra Aczél, co-chair of the Committee for Communication and Media Theory.