Citations
In general, students are asked to use MLA or APA style for citing their sources. Whatever the style may be, each style will specify a uniform way of citing sources that will give an orderly appearance to the bibliography .It should be in such a way that one needs to provide all the essential elements of information that a reader will need to locate the source.
Here is a quick guidance and a brief differentiation of the two styles MLA and APA.
1. For Parenthetical Citation in Text, APA uses author name, date of publication, and page number.
MLA uses author name and page.
2. APA lists all authors and uses last name and first initial to cite the names of authors or editors.
On the other hand MLA writes out available names. If there are more than 3 only the first three are listed and etc is used.
3. APA capitalizes only the first word of the title.
MLA capitalizes all important words of the title.
4 While APA style uses full name of the publisher
MLA allows shortening of the name.
5. While quoting the place of publication APA lists state abbreviations too but MLA does not. It lists only the city.
6. In APA style, the dates follow author’s name.
In MLA Style the dates are placed at the end of the citation.