Home · APA or MLA
APA or MLA: which one do you need?
Most people are told which style to use and never told why the two differ. They differ because they were built for different arguments, and once you see that, the rules stop looking arbitrary.
Who uses which
APA 7
Psychology, education, nursing, business and most of the social sciences. If your subject produces findings that go out of date, you are probably in APA.
MLA 9
English, languages, philosophy, history of art and most of the humanities. If your subject works with texts that do not go out of date, you are probably in MLA.
Neither, apparently
If your brief says only Harvard, that is a family of styles rather than one manual, and your department will have its own guide. Use that guide, and use the Harvard option here as a starting point rather than an authority.
The four differences that matter
The year, and where it goes
APA puts the year immediately after the author, in both the reference and the sentence. MLA puts it near the end of the reference and never in the sentence at all. This is the single biggest tell, and it follows from the subjects: in the social sciences how recent a study is changes what it is worth, and in literature it usually does not.
The page, and whether you need one
MLA carries a page in almost every in-text citation, because the argument is usually about a specific passage. APA wants one only when you quote directly. Copying one habit into the other style is the commonest error in a first year bibliography.
How authors are written
APA gives initials and joins the last two with an ampersand: Doe, J., & Roe, R. MLA writes the first author's given name in full and uses the word and: Doe, Jane, and Richard Roe. APA lists up to twenty authors before shortening; MLA shortens to et al. from three.
Capitalisation of titles
APA uses sentence case for an article or book title: only the first word and any proper nouns. MLA uses headline case, capitalising the significant words. Almost nobody changes this when they switch styles, and it is immediately visible.
How to tell what you have been asked for
Read the brief for a year
APA 7 and MLA 9 are the current editions. A brief that says APA 6 wants the older rules, which differ enough to matter: APA 6 stopped naming authors at seven and included the publisher's city.
Look at a reading list
The style your department writes its own reading lists in is almost always the style it wants back. It is a faster answer than the handbook.
When in doubt, ask before you write
Converting a finished bibliography by hand is slow and error prone. Converting it here is instant, but only if the underlying details are right, which is the part worth getting correct first.
Questions
Can I mix the two?
No. Pick one and use it for the in-text citations and the reference list together. A document with MLA references and APA in-text citations reads as though it was assembled from two sources, which is exactly the impression a bibliography is supposed to avoid.
My department says Harvard. Is that APA?
They look similar and they are not the same. Harvard is a family: the author and year sit in brackets like APA, but the punctuation, the use of Available at: and whether an accessed date is required all vary by institution. Follow the guide you were given.
Does the style change what I have to cite?
No. Every style asks you to cite the same things: anything you quote, paraphrase, or take a figure or an idea from. The style only decides how it is written down.
Which one does this site do best?
Both, and four more, from the same record. Switching style here reformats what you already looked up rather than starting again, which is the reason the switch is instant.
Build the references themselves
More on citing
THE ANDROID APP
Keep them, export them, and check your draft
CiteRight for Android keeps references in projects, exports a bibliography in any of the six styles, and checks a draft sentence by sentence for text that overlaps a source.