APA vs MLA vs Chicago: The Three Citation Styles Compared Side by Side

§ 01

APA vs MLA vs Chicago: the short answer

Whether you searched APA vs MLA or MLA vs APA, you landed on the same question with two possible answers, plus a third style, Chicago, that your assignment might require instead. The fastest way to tell them apart is what each one asks you to put in parentheses and what it calls the list at the end of your paper.

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§ 02

Side-by-side citation table: a book, a journal article and a website

The clearest way to see the three styles apart is the same composite source, cited three ways. The examples below are composite samples written by GradeDraft, not real publications: do not cite them in your own paper.

A book

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A journal article

Three authors show the "et al." rule: an APA 7 or MLA 9 in-text citation and a Chicago 18 note all shorten to the first author plus "et al." from the very first citation. The end lists differ: APA and Chicago name all three authors, while MLA's Works Cited entry shortens to "et al." too.

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A website

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MLA drops a source's page number when the source itself has none, which is why the website row above cites Cho with no number. Page ranges differ too: APA writes the full range (118–134), MLA shortens the second number (118-34), and Chicago prefers the shortened form (118–34). For a full paper built entirely in one style, see a full APA 7 student paper or, for the same source list built two ways, one source list in APA 7 and MLA 9. Research paper examples in each style cover full papers rather than single citations.

§ 03

APA 7: author-date for the sciences

APA, the American Psychological Association's style, is now in its 7th edition (2020) and covers psychology, education, nursing and most social sciences.

In-text citations

A parenthetical citation gives author and year: (Alvarez, 2023). A narrative citation puts the author in the sentence and the year in parentheses: Alvarez (2023) found. Two authors join with an ampersand in parentheses ("&") or "and" in narrative text. Three or more authors shorten to the first author plus "et al." starting with the very first citation, a change from the 6th edition, which spelled out three to five authors in full at the first mention. A direct quote adds a page number after the year; a paraphrase does not need one, though APA 7 lets you add one when it helps a reader find the passage in a long work.

Reference list

The page is titled "References," alphabetized by the first author's surname, with a hanging indent on every entry. Article and book titles use sentence case (capitalize only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns); journal names keep their own title case and are italicized along with the volume number. A DOI, when the source has one, is written as a full https://doi.org/ link, never a bare string of digits. APA 7 also dropped the publisher's city, which the 6th edition required.

Paper format

Times New Roman 12 pt is still accepted, alongside newer options such as Calibri 11 pt or Georgia 11 pt. The whole paper is double-spaced with 1-inch margins. A student paper needs a title page (title, name, department and institution, course, instructor, date) and a page number on every page, but no running head; that requirement applies only to a professional manuscript submitted for publication. Level 1 headings are centered, bold and title case; Level 2 headings are left-aligned, bold and title case, nested under a Level 1.

§ 04

MLA 9: author-page for the humanities

MLA, the Modern Language Association's style, is now in its 9th edition (2021) and covers English, literature, languages and most humanities courses.

In-text citations

MLA cites author and page, with no comma between them: (Alvarez 45). A narrative citation drops the author from the parenthetical and keeps only the page: Alvarez writes that attention in class fragments within minutes (45). Two authors join with "and": (Alvarez and Cho 12). Three or more authors shorten to the first author's surname plus "et al.," the same rule APA 7 uses, and MLA has applied it since the 8th edition. A source with no page numbers, such as most web pages, drops the number and cites the author alone, or the title when there is no named author.

Works Cited list

MLA calls its list of cited sources "Works Cited," not "References" or "Bibliography," alphabetized by author surname with a hanging indent. MLA 9 keeps the "container" system the 8th edition introduced: author, title of the source in quotes or italics, title of the container (the journal, the website, the anthology), other contributors, version, number, publisher, date, and location. The author and the source's title each end with a period, the container elements after them are separated by commas, and the whole entry ends in a period. A URL usually drops its "https://" prefix, but a DOI keeps it, written as https://doi.org/ followed by the number, as in the journal row above.

Paper format

MLA skips a separate title page by default. Instead, the first page carries a left-aligned heading: your name, your instructor's name, the course, and the date written day-month-year (15 September 2026), followed by a centered title in plain text, no bold, italics or underline. Every page, the first one included, carries a running header in the top right: your last name and the page number. The body is double-spaced, 12 pt, with 1-inch margins, matching APA on the basic page setup even though the two styles disagree on almost everything else.

§ 05

Chicago: notes-bibliography or author-date

Chicago is not one system but two, and which one you use depends on your field, not your preference. The notes-bibliography version runs on footnotes or endnotes and suits history and other fields where a source needs its own aside; the author-date version reads closer to APA and suits some social sciences and business programs. The 18th edition published in 2024 is current, and plenty of programs still assign the 17th edition (2017): when your syllabus names an edition, follow that one over this page. One difference shows in the book examples above: the 18th edition no longer requires a book's place of publication, which the 17th edition puts before the publisher (Portland, OR: Larkspur Press).

In-text citations and notes

Notes-bibliography cites with a superscript number¹ in the text, tied to a numbered footnote or endnote at the bottom of the page or the end of the chapter. The first note for a source is full (author, title, publication details, page); every later note for the same source shortens to author's last name, a short title, and the page. Author-date Chicago instead cites like APA, with author and year in parentheses: (Alvarez 2023, 45), with no comma after the author and no "p." before the page. In the 18th edition, a note or author-date citation for a work with three or more authors names only the first author plus "et al."; the 17th edition did that from four authors.

Bibliography or reference list

Notes-bibliography ends the paper with a "Bibliography," alphabetized by author surname, hanging indent, and periods separating the elements instead of the commas a footnote uses. Author-date Chicago instead ends with a "References" list that looks close to APA's, though Chicago sets the volume number in roman type where APA italicizes it, and puts "no." before the issue number where APA puts the issue in parentheses.

Paper format

Chicago sets fewer universal page rules than APA or MLA; most of what governs margins, headers and a title page comes from your university's or publisher's own house style layered on top of the base citation rules. What stays constant is the note-and-bibliography or author-date choice itself, made once for the whole paper, never mixed.

§ 06

MLA vs Chicago and APA vs Chicago, head to head

MLA vs Chicago and APA vs Chicago each turn on the same two questions: what goes in the text, and what the end list is called.

Chicago vs APA looks closest of any pairing here once Chicago runs in author-date mode; the differences sit in punctuation, title capitalization and the journal entry, where Chicago sets the volume in roman type and puts "no." before the issue, not in the underlying logic.

§ 07

Which citation style should you use?

Which citation style to use is rarely your call to make; it is set by your discipline, your instructor or the journal you are submitting to, and getting it right the first time saves a full reformatting pass later.

When nothing tells you otherwise, APA is the safest default for an undergraduate social-science course, and MLA is the safest default for an English or composition course. Picking the style is only step one; how to write the research paper itself covers the steps, structure and drafting that come next.

§ 08

Other citation styles you may be assigned

APA, MLA and Chicago are not the only types of citation styles a program uses; a handful of others turn up in specific fields.

Harvard vs APA is a common mix-up: both cite author and date in the text, but Harvard has no single publisher setting the rules, while APA's come from one manual, which is why two "Harvard" reference lists from two universities can disagree on small details that two APA lists never would.

§ 09

When the reference list is the problem

A style choice is usually the easy part; getting every entry in a source list to actually match that style, book by book and article by article, is where an evening disappears. If the assignment is an annotated bibliography, annotated bibliographies formatted in your style are priced per source: each entry is cited in APA, MLA or Chicago and gets a written annotation. If the paper itself still needs writing, a research paper written in your assigned style covers the argument and the citations together, and the desk confirms your exact style and edition before a writer starts. GradeDraft covers research papers written in any of the three styles at any level, with the reference list formatted as part of the paper.