Guide
MLA 9 vs APA 7: a side-by-side guide
Both styles do the same job differently. Here are the differences that cost marks when you mix them up.
Write It teamUpdated 3 min read
MLA and APA disagree about what matters. MLA cares where in a text something appears; APA cares when it was published. Almost every formatting difference follows from that.
The core difference
MLA was built for literature, where you point a reader to a specific passage — hence page numbers in every in-text citation. APA was built for science, where recency matters — hence the year up front, so a reader immediately knows whether you are citing 1974 or last spring.
Keep that in mind and most of the rules stop feeling arbitrary.
In-text citations
| Situation | MLA 9 | APA 7 |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | (Morrison 42) | (Morrison, 1987) |
| With a page | (Morrison 42) | (Morrison, 1987, p. 42) |
| Author named in sentence | Morrison argues … (42). | Morrison (1987) argues … |
| Two authors | (Chen and Diaz 15) | (Chen & Diaz, 2020) |
| Three or more | (Chen et al. 15) | (Chen et al., 2020) |
Note the ampersand: APA uses & inside parentheses, MLA spells out "and".
APA only requires a page number when you quote directly, though it recommends one for a specific paraphrase. MLA wants the location whenever the source has one.
The reference list
| Element | MLA 9 | APA 7 |
|---|---|---|
| Page title | Works Cited | References |
| Author names | Morrison, Toni. | Morrison, T. |
| Date position | Near the end | Right after the author |
| Article titles | Title Case in quotation marks | Sentence case, no quotation marks |
| Journal titles | Italic, Title Case | Italic, Title Case |
| URLs | Omit http:// and https:// | Full URL or DOI as a link |
Sentence case in APA catches people out. An article title becomes "The effects of sleep deprivation on memory" — only the first word, proper nouns, and anything after a colon get capitals.
Page formatting
- MLA. No title page unless asked. Your name, teacher, course, and date in the top-left of page one. Header with your last name and page number, top-right. Title centered.
- APA. Title page required for student papers — title, your name, institution, course, instructor, and date, centered. Page numbers top-right. Running head not required for student work in the 7th edition.
Both use double spacing throughout, one-inch margins, and a hanging indent on the reference list.
Which one do you use?
- MLA — English, literature, languages, most humanities. AP Lit and AP Lang typically.
- APA — psychology, sociology, education, nursing, business, most social sciences.
- Chicago — history and some humanities, in either notes-bibliography or author-date form.
The mistakes that cost marks
- Mixing the two — an APA in-text citation over an MLA Works Cited. Extremely common when you switch classes.
- Title Case in APA article titles.
- Forgetting the hanging indent.
- Reference list not alphabetical by author surname.
- A source cited in the text that never made it into the list, or vice versa.
That last one is worth a specific check. Read your in-text citations and your reference list against each other before you submit — every entry should appear in both.
Set the style once, cite consistently
Research Mode formats MLA 9, APA 7, Chicago, and IEEE and inserts the list into your Google Doc.