APA format vs. MLA format

Hello everybody!

In the following post I'd like to point out the main differences between the APA and the MLA styles, which I drew from visiting the links out English teacher gave us. The first difference concerns parenthetical in-text citations: the APA style uses the author's name, date of publication, and page number while the MLA style indicates just the author's name and page number. Secondly, as far as authors and editors are concerned, the APA system lists all authors and editors giving their last names and first initials whereas the MLA system spells out available names, and, in the case there are more than 3, lists just the first one with et al. Another important difference, which partly makes you understand why the APA is used for scientific research and the MLA for humanities category, concerns titles. While the former one italicizes it and capitalizes only its first word, the latter one underlines it and capitalizes every important word in it. Next, as concerns publishers, the APA style uses full names while the MLA style prefers to shorten them. As far as the place of publication is concerned, the APA style adds the state abbreviation when the city is less known whereas the MLA style only lists the city. As regards pages, which have to be indicated always when referring to specific parts of a source, the APA style lists the first page as well as additional ones. On the contrary, the MLA style lists just the first page, adding + to indicate that additional pages were taken into account, too. A further difference is about dates: in the APA aystem dates always follow the author name/s while in the MLA one they're placed at the end of the citation. Finally, as far as indentions are concerned, in the APA style just the first line of each entry is indented whereas in the MLA style it's exactly the opposite: the first line of each entry is flush with the left margin, and the rest of the citation is indented.

Thinking about my BA thesis, I must admit that I used a mixture of these two reference styles. For example, as far as titles are concerned, I wrote them in italics, as the APA style suggests, but I used capital letters with every semantically important word. As concerns the reference list, I indicated the author's name, the title, the place of publication, the publisher, and the date of publication. As for in-text citations I put the author's name and the date in parethesis: so, again a mixture between the two formats. I remember that I had some difficulties in listing references when I had to write my thesis, or when I was asked to write some academic paper. Now I'm becoming even more familiar with the various, different styles you can use to indicate the references of your work. However, I'm still convinced that one of the main difficulty is to decide what style is more suitable for the kind of writing you're working on. Reading further information about the APA format and the MLA format, I learnt that a basic difference between them concerns just the subjects they're commonly used for: the APA style is generally considered to be more suitable for the exposition of scientific research, the MLA style for humanities. Once chosen the format, it's very complicated to follow all the rules it recommends, anyway.

I hope that I'll learn how to use references even better in the future! Writing my MA thesis is going to be a real challenge!

See you soon,

Michela