APA vs MLA: Side-by-Side Citation Style Comparison
Most students get assigned one style and never switch. When you do switch, or when a class lets you choose, the differences between APA 7th edition and MLA 9th edition matter in small but graded-down ways.
In-text citation
APA: (Brown, 2018, p. 42)
MLA: (Brown 42)
Watch the punctuation, the page-number prefix, and the comma placement. Those are the bits professors mark down.
Reference list entry (a book by one author)
APA:
Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead. Random House.
MLA:
Brown, Brené. Dare to Lead. Random House, 2018.
Author names
APA: Last, F. M. with initials only. Up to 20 authors listed by name, with an ellipsis for 21 or more before the final author.
MLA: Last, First M. with full first names. First author inverted, subsequent authors in normal order.
Dates
APA: Year in parentheses right after the author: (2018). Day and month appear only for newspapers, blogs, and dated web content.
MLA: Day Month Year format with no commas: 14 Mar. 2024. Months longer than four letters get abbreviated.
Where each is used
APA is the default in social sciences, education, psychology, nursing, and most STEM fields outside the humanities.
MLA dominates literature, languages, cultural studies, and most humanities courses.
Frequently asked
Can I convert a APA paper to MLA automatically?
No tool does this losslessly. Author order, date format, and italicization rules all shift. Our generator can produce either style from the same input fields, which is faster than trying to convert one to the other.
If my professor accepts either, which should I pick?
Pick the one most common in your field. APA for social sciences, education, psychology, nursing, and most STEM fields outside the humanities. MLA for literature, languages, cultural studies, and most humanities courses. Future readers will be expecting that one.
Do the in-text rules differ as much as the reference rules?
Yes. The in-text format is usually what catches students out first, because it appears more often than the reference list.