... it's what friends are for. First off, I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your family member :-( When I lost my grandfather a few years ago, I remember how badly I felt. I know your situation is worse, because I get the impression your close relative was much younger, and his passing was very unexpected. Don't worry about feeling like a wreck on the inside, that's normal so soon after such a jarring loss, and it's quite cool of you to maintain a strong front for the benefit of consoling your family. Losing a loved one, especially like this, is quite a blow to our feelings of security and comfort in life, but please know you do not have to deal with this alone. Please keep us updated on this, and always feel free to come to us when you need someone to talk to, even if it's off-topic.

As for that professor of yours, since I too attended college I share your consternation over educators who are sticklers for such things as formatting. I've always believed that formatting is more based on popular aesthetic preferences than anything related to ease of reading, or in the case of APA, anything related to comprehensiveness of information about the source of a certain quote. The introduction of the Internet changed a lot of things in regards to literary rules. Further, the way of doing this formatting has always differed from country to country, and as you noted, frequently changes in many details as time passes. How many readers actually care so much about formatting compared to professors? I believe most readers care more about ease of reading and comprehensiveness of source information than they do with every little formatting detail being absolutely perfect according to one of the various styles. I personally see how much work and effort you put into your writing based on your posts here, so I can only imagine how well your papers must be composed.

I'm also sorry this happened at a time when you didn't need any type of additional bad news. I hate how the old saying "when it rains, it pours" proves correct at certain times. But instead of exploding at the teacher, you can explode here, and we'll gladly offer you support. I too know exactly what it's like to have a professor who is so quick to put more value on little technical details than the overall quality of a paper's readability and level of research.