MLA vs Chicago: 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 MLA 9th edition and Chicago 17th (Notes-Bibliography) matter in small but graded-down ways.
In-text citation
MLA: (Brown 42)
Chicago: Footnote 1, then "Brown 2018, 42"
Notice 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)
MLA:
Brown, Brené. Dare to Lead. Random House, 2018.
Chicago:
Brown, Brené. Dare to Lead. New York: Random House, 2018.
Author names
MLA: Last, First M. with full first names. First author inverted only; subsequent authors in normal order.
Chicago: Same as MLA in bibliographies. Notes use First Last (not inverted). Up to 10 names listed.
Dates
MLA: Day Month Year format with no commas: 14 Mar. 2024. Months over four letters are abbreviated.
Chicago: Month Day, Year: March 14, 2024. Full month names. Day-Month-Year is allowed in British editions.
Where each is used
MLA is the default in literature, languages, cultural studies, and most humanities courses.
Chicago dominates history, philosophy, theology, and the broader humanities at the graduate level.
Frequently asked
Can I convert a MLA paper to Chicago automatically?
No tool does this losslessly. The author order, date format, and italicization rules differ. Our generator can produce either style from the same input fields — easier to redo references than to convert them.
If my professor accepts either, which should I pick?
Pick the one used most in your field — literature, languages, cultural studies, and most humanities courses for MLA, history, philosophy, theology, and the broader humanities at the graduate level for Chicago. Future readers will be expecting that one.
Do the in-text citation rules differ as much as the reference rules?
Yes. The in-text format is usually what catches most students out first because it appears more often than the reference list.