APA or MLA? Which Citation Style to Use

Short answer: use APA for sciences, psychology, nursing, education, and business. Use MLA for English, literature, languages, and most humanities. Your professor's syllabus overrides everything below, so check there first.

If your syllabus doesn't say, the subject of your paper is the tiebreaker.

The 10-Second Rule

• Writing about a study, data, or behavior? APA.
• Writing about a novel, poem, film, or author? MLA.
• Writing about history, philosophy, or art? Check the syllabus. History often uses Chicago, but MLA is common in undergrad humanities.

That covers maybe 90% of student papers.

What's Actually Different

Both styles cite the same sources. They just format the details differently and prioritize different information. APA cares about when something was published (recency matters in science). MLA cares about who said it and where in the text (page numbers matter for close reading).

In-text citations

APA puts the year right next to the author:

Sleep deprivation reduces working memory by roughly 38% (Lim & Dinges, 2010).

MLA skips the year and uses a page number:

Gatsby's "incorruptible dream" collapses in the final chapter (Fitzgerald 162).

That's the giveaway when you're skimming a paper to figure out which style it's in. Year in parens? APA. Page number with no comma? MLA.

The reference list

APA calls it "References." MLA calls it "Works Cited." Both go at the end, both are alphabetical by author last name, and both use a hanging indent.

Same book, two formats:

APA (7th edition): Fitzgerald, F. S. (1925). The great Gatsby. Scribner.

MLA (9th edition): Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner, 1925.

Notice APA uses initials and lowercases most of the title. MLA spells out the first name and capitalizes every major word. Publisher comes before the year in MLA, after the year in APA.

Title page and headings

APA wants a separate title page with a running head, page number, title, your name, and institution. MLA skips the title page entirely. You put your name, instructor, course, and date in the top-left of page one, then the title centered below.

If your instructor wants a cover page for an MLA paper, that's their call, not the style guide.

Page formatting

Both use:

• 12-point readable font (Times New Roman is standard, but APA 7 also allows Calibri 11 and Arial 11)
• Double-spacing throughout
• 1-inch margins
• Page numbers in the top right

About 250 words per double-spaced page, so a 5-page paper lands near 1,250 words.

Subject-by-Subject Cheat Sheet

When a class crosses fields (say, a "Psychology of Literature" seminar), default to the department running the course. A psych department course uses APA even if you're writing about novels.

A Few Things Students Get Wrong

"APA is for research papers, MLA is for essays." Not really. You can write a research paper in MLA and a personal essay in APA. The style follows the discipline, not the assignment type.

Mixing styles in one paper. Don't. If you find a source already formatted in APA and you're writing in MLA, reformat it. Citation generators handle this in seconds.

Forgetting the in-text citation when you paraphrase. Both styles require a citation for paraphrased ideas, not just direct quotes. Skipping it because you reworded the sentence is still plagiarism.

Using an outdated edition. APA 7 came out in 2019 and changed a lot from APA 6 (no more "Retrieved from" before URLs, for one). MLA 9 came out in 2021. If your guide says 6th edition APA, it's old.

When You Genuinely Can't Decide

Ask your professor by email. One sentence: "For the [assignment name], should I use APA or MLA?" Faster than guessing wrong and rewriting every citation the night before it's due.

Generate APA or MLA citations →