In academic writing, it is necessary to build authority into your work and give credit to the creators and owners of borrowed material. Style guides have evolved over the years to provide an organized means to do so. The three most commonly used guides are MLA, APA, and Chicago. Each method was developed to meet the needs of a different type of research writing.
MLA addresses the concerns of the humanities and is the easiest to use. It is suitable for English, literature, humanities, and many other disciplines. APA was developed for the social and behavioral sciences and is somewhat more complicated to learn. The distinguishing characteristic of APA is its emphasis on the timeliness of the source material. The Chicago style is commonly used in the natural and physical sciences and is also used in business and technical writing as well. The distinguishing characteristic of this style is that footnotes or endnotes are used in place of a works cited or reference page. The Chicago style is also known as the Turabian style.
Each style addresses a variety of concerns including English usage, presentation of tables and figures, document layout, in-text citation, and the bibliography.
The Writing Center staff provides comprehensive assistance with MLA 5th edition citation method. They can provide limited assistance with APA, Chicago, or older versions of MLA. We ask students to bring in their source material when they come to the Center.
Modern Language Association (MLA)
