Similarities and differences between MLA and APA citation styles

¶ … professional or educational purposes is an accomplishment for the author. Academia largely relies on these materials created by others in order to further their own work, learn about the author's topic, and expand upon the current published knowledge. When personal material is utilized by others, it is essential that the one borrowing the information gives credit to the owner of the material.

As a result, anyone utilizing any material authored by another must utilize a form of citation to give credit to the owner. Citation is However, throughout the various career and geographical areas there are variations to the format of the citation. This paper will focus on the similarities and differences between two of the most common forms of source citation: MLA and APA.

Usage of Citation Method

The Modern Language Association was begun in 1883 as a form of collaboration for those in the scholarly arena (Modern Language Association 2004). The standards for the citation of resources in scholarly writings was the outcome of such an effort to create a standard and formal method of giving credit to the authors whose work is utilized in an academic manner. Currently, the sixth edition is available. Most usage of MLA is found in the liberal arts and humanities (Stolley 2006).

The American Psychological Association, or APA, is the source of the citation formatting style with the same name. The most common usage of APA citations occurs in the social sciences (Neyhart, Karper, & Wagner 2006). The most recent revision is the fifth edition.

In-Text Citation

The style of in-text citation used for this paper is MLA format. Whereas the usage of APA does include the author's last name and the date of the publication, there are a few differences. Firstly, whereas in MLA format there is no comma after the author's last name, in APA format there is. Also, another difference is the inclusion of the page number from which the piece of sourced information was found when using the APA style (Neyhart et al. 2006).