MLA stands for Modern Language Association and APA stands for American Psychological Association. Both these are considered to be formatting styles that are used in academic works which include papers and research. MLA is mainly applied when you write papers on liberal arts or humanities while APA is generally applied in papers of social science.
Both the guideline provides recommendations on how to format the references, content, and style. Though they both are similar, there some significant differences between APA and MLA which you should know.
The difference in the formatting of the paper
MLA and APA both require your assignment to be double-spaced, have one-inch margins on all the sides and the font size of the letter needs to be 12pt.
When you prepare a paper in MLA style, you are not required to make a title page and also an abstract. The work here mainly will consist of two sections which are the body paragraphs and another page with all the references cited.
When you are going to prepare a paper in APA style, the paper should have four main sections which are the title page, abstract, the body paragraphs and a page with the list of the references. The abstract needs to be around 150 to about 250 words and also have a summary of the primary points that is going to be mentioned in the assignment. The abstract should have one paragraph and needs to be double-spaced.
The difference in the title page
In the MLA formatted assignment or paper, the title should be on the first page which will be separated from the title of the essay by only the double space. In this format of the paper, you need to keep the header on the left which will have the name of the author, the instructor, the cyrse name and the page numbers.
In the APA formatted paper, you should have page headers that will be situated on the top of all the pages including the title page. The numbering of the pages will be on the right of the title of the paper. Here the page title consists of the title and the also the name of the author and also a title of the education establishment.
The difference in the in-text citations
Both the formatting styles have a different approach. The APA format uses author-date and MLA format uses an author-page format.
The paper which is formatted in the MLA format mainly consists of the author’s last name and the page number on the other hand; the APA format uses the author’s last name or the surname and the year of publication after the sentence.
The difference in the reference page
The paper that is referenced according to the MLA format will use a separate page for references and the title should be “Work Cited”. Similarly, there needs to be a separate referencing page for the assignment or the paper which will use the APA format and the heading there will be “References”.
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