Who uses which style
| Style | Current edition | Typical fields |
|---|---|---|
| APA | 7th (2020) | psychology, education, social and health sciences, business |
| MLA | 9th (2021) | literature, languages, humanities |
| Chicago | 18th (2024) | history, the arts, publishing; notes-bibliography or author-date |
When in doubt, use the style your instructor, journal or publisher specifies, and stay consistent.
The same book in three styles
APA 7
Pinker, S. (2014). The sense of style: The thinking person’s guide to writing in the 21st century. Viking.
MLA 9
Pinker, Steven. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Viking, 2014.
Chicago 18 (bibliography)
Pinker, Steven. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Viking, 2014.
Key differences
| APA 7 | MLA 9 | Chicago 18 (notes-bibliography) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author names | Surname, initials | Surname, full first name | Surname, full first name |
| Date position | right after the author | near the end | near the end |
| Title capitalisation | sentence case for works | title case | title case (headline style) |
| Many authors | list up to 20 | three or more: “et al.” | up to six; seven or more: first three + “et al.” |
| In-text | (Pinker, 2014, p. 12) | (Pinker 12) | footnote: Pinker, Sense of Style, 12. |
| URLs | full URL | URL without https:// | full URL |
| List title | References | Works Cited | Bibliography |
Journal articles
APA puts volume numbers in italics and issue numbers in parentheses (Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047) and links DOIs as https://doi.org/… MLA writes “vol. 109” and “no. 2”; Chicago puts the year in parentheses after the volume.
Web pages
All three cite the author (or organisation), title, site name, date and URL. APA uses the date the page was published or updated; MLA adds an access date when no publication date exists; Chicago adds an access date only if no date is given.
Ordering the list
All three sort references alphabetically by the first author’s surname, ignoring “A”, “An” and “The” when an entry begins with a title. The Bibliography Sorter does this correctly, including accented names.
Generate and check
The Citation Generator formats books, journal articles, web pages and news articles in all three styles at once, with in-text citations, and copies with italics intact. Because APA uses sentence case for titles, check proper nouns afterwards (the Sentence Case Converter can help prepare titles).
Sources
- Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed. (2020).
- MLA Handbook, 9th ed. (2021).
- The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed. (2024).