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"
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)
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, 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 longer than four letters get 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. 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. MLA for literature, languages, cultural studies, and most humanities courses. Chicago for history, philosophy, theology, and the broader humanities at the graduate level. 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.