APA and MLA Citations Compared: Home

Citing sources is a required step in the research process. 

You are expected to give credit or attribution for the source of the ideas that you use in your academic writing, presentations, and projects.   Direct quotations, paraphrases, and summaries must be cited.

Many citation styles are in use. Which style you use depends on the discipline, publication, or a professor’s requirements.  

Purdue Online Writing Lab - Research and Citation Resources - OWL

APA is commonly used to cite sources in the social sciences. For example, Miami Regionals' Nursing Department requires APA.

APA Citation Style Guide  - formatting and examples, Gardner-Harvey Library

Basic APA Citation format for Articles in Periodicals - examples, OWL

Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab states:  
APA style dictates that authors are named last name followed by initials; publication year goes between parentheses, followed by a period. The title of the article is in sentence-case, meaning only the first word and proper nouns in the title are capitalized. The periodical title is run in title case, and is followed by the volume number which, with the title, is also italicized. If a DOI has been assigned to the article that you are using, you should include this after the page numbers for the article. If no DOI has been assigned and you are accessing the periodical online, use the URL of the website from which you are retrieving the periodical. 

APA article formatting looks like:

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. http://dx.doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy 

APA format for an Article from a Database, OWL

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume number, page range. Retrieved from http://www.someaddress.com/full/url/

Here are some major differences between APA 6th and  MLA 8^th.

Here is a fuller comparison of citation styles, updated October 2017.   MLA 7th edition, APA, and Chicago:  Purdue OWL Citation Chart 

Modern Language Association or MLA  is commonly used to cite sources in the humanities.

MLA Citation Style Guide  - formatting and examples

Modern Language Association citation style, 8th edition was released in April 2016.  The intent is to provide principles of documenting sources rather than strict formatting rules for different source types, as in the 7th edition.  According the OWL the MLA 8^th edition relies on providing core elements of publication in a specific order:  
 

When deciding how to cite your source, start by consulting the list of core elements. These are the general pieces of information that MLA suggests including in each Works Cited entry. In your citation, the elements should be listed in the following order and using this simpler punctuation or periods or commas as shown:

1.    Author.

2.    Title of source.

3.    Title of container,

4.    Other contributors,

5.    Version,

6.    Number,

7.    Publisher,

8.    Publication date,

9.    Location.