Understanding Key Differences Between MLA and APA Citation Styles (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: This video describes the difference between formatting works cited citations in MLA and reference list citations in APA. We won't be able to describe every single difference of citing every single kind of source, but we will look at some examples of the same source cited in both styles so you can see the general differences. Let's start with similarities, though. In both MLA and APA, format your citations in Times New Roman font, 12-point size, with double spacing, and a hanging indent. Now let's tackle the differences. The first difference between the two styles is that they each call this list of citation different things. While MLA calls it a works cited list, APA calls it a references list. The next difference is in how we write authors' names. Both styles start with the author's last name and a comma. But MLA spells out the author's first name and abbreviates any middle initial, while APA uses initials for both first and middle names. APA does not care what your author's first name is, change it to an initial. The next difference is that the date of the source appears much sooner in APA citations than it does in MLA. APA is used in disciplines like social sciences and health sciences that really care about how current your information is, so that's why it's the next element in the citation after the author's name. In MLA style, the date comes later in the citation, because it's usually not as important to be using the most up-to-date sources as possible in disciplines like English and foreign languages. The next general difference has to do with capitalization. MLA uses headline capitalization for titles. All important words are capitalized, but not smaller words like articles or prepositions in the middle of a title. APA uses headline capitalization for some kinds of titles and sentence capitalization for other kinds of titles. Titles of shorter works, like articles, webpages, and book chapters, use sentence capitalization. Only the first word of the title, the subtitle, and any proper nouns are capitalized. But for larger entities, like titles of websites, publications, or databases, APA uses headline capitalization. It can be hard to keep APA's capitalization rules straight, but don't worry, you can always look them up whenever you need them. There are lots of other differences between MLA and APA in terms of the information elements you have to include in citations and how they are formatted and ordered, but it depends on the type of source you're citing, and this video can't cover everything. For more information on how to cite specific sources in MLA or APA, consult help guides like our library site, the resources your professor provides, and online guides like the Purdue OWL. When you have questions about MLA or APA, contact a librarian.