APA vs MLA

APA (American Psychological Association) and MLA (Modern Language Association) are two of the most commonly used guidelines for citing sources and formatting research papers. While reading some basic information about them my first impression was that APA style is much more constraining than MLA, but let's see what the main similarities and differences are:

Both style

• require that whenever you use a source you provide in the text brief parenthetical references mentioning the author and page number(s);
• recommend that at the end of your paper you provide an alphabeltical list of the works you used and consulted for your thesis listing the complete citation for each work referred to parenthetically in the text;
• prefer a language clear, concise and plain (so, minimize the figurative language).
  

APA

• gives very precise and detailed instructions of both the major paper sections and the specific formats to be used in the text (headings, stylistics, in-text citations, quotations, references etc.);
• your essay should include 4 major sections: Title page, Abstract, Main Body and References;
• suggests you make the References list by: capitalizing all major words in journal titles, italicizing titles of longer works (books and journals), not italicizing underlying or putting quotes around the titles of shorter works (journal articles or essays in edited collections).
  

MLA style

• gives precise but more general rules;
  
• recommends always underlining instead of using italics: it is more distinctive and recognizable for material that is to be graded or edited;
• recommends using a more descriptive heading such as Works Cited, Works Consulted, or Annotated Works Cited;
• when you have more than 2 authors, it suggests you provide all names, separated by commas with and before the last (not &, as APA suggests).