16.1: MLA and APA

At some point in any class at Butler that requires you to write a formal, researched paper, you may be asked to “use MLA (or APA) style.” These abbreviations refer to the systems used by professional scholars and researchers to present their work to audiences in their own fields. MLA stands for Modern Language Association and tends to be preferred by researchers and writers in the Humanities, whereas APA style is created by the American Psychological Association and used in the fields of Business, Education, and the social sciences. There are quite a few other styles (such as Chicago, Turabian, or IEEE), but you are most likely to encounter APA and MLA at Butler CC.

These formats, or styles, exist so scholars can share a common language for presenting work to each other, and so they can easily find out more about the topics and information they find in formally-published scholarship. MLA and APA may seem similar, since they both use in-text parenthetical citations and then gather the more detailed publication information at the end of a paper, but there are some important differences that make different styles work better in different fields.

Humanities scholars tend to prefer MLA style. In fields such as literature, philosophy, and history, researchers are gathering information from, among other sources, entire books, monographs, and scholarly journal articles that may reach 20 or 30 pages in length. They are generally not writing about recent scientific discoveries, and in fact it is quite possible for a paper written 200 years ago to be relevant to current scholarship. Thus, MLA style is concerned, in the body of a paper, with the name of the author and the page number of the source.

Scholars in other fields are more likely to be using the most recent evidence they can find, since new research often invalidates older findings. Thus, a paper written in APA style uses, in its parenthetical citations, the author’s name and the year of publication for the cited source.

Each style has been developed and refined over the past several decades, and you should be careful to use the most recent version of each. The following pages provide more detailed information on using both styles and are provided by the Butler CC libraries.

• You can find more information on MLA style at this address: www.mla.org/MLA-Style
• Detailed information on APA style can be found here: www.apastyle.org

Both of these sites are run by commercial organizations, and they may charge you for using their products. But as a BCC student, you have already paid for access to them via your student fees. The following pages will provide a basic overview of the two styles.

You can find more information on MLA at the MLA website.

You can find more information on APA style at the APA website.

Keeping Track of Citations

Now that you know some basics of citation styles, it’s important to know how to keep track of citations.

Why should you keep track of citations? Firstly, you want to remember what you looked up, especially if you haven’t read the source fully yet. You will be able to find a source very quickly if you keep all of your citations in one place. Secondly, you will need to cite in your paper, so it’s good to have a running list so you are not scrambling to create a list and/or citations in the correct format at the last minute.

Many students create a GoogleDocs with citations. If you are getting a lot of your information from our library’s databases, this is not a bad idea. Most of library’s databases have a citation tool (often labeled “Cite” or “Citation”). Click on this icon, scroll down to the correct citation format, copy, and paste into your document.

If you are not using the databases and need help building your citations, you have access to NoodleTools, which is a very reliable tool for making and storing citations. For institutional access, navigate to this page from the Butler Libraries and then select “Noodle Tools”. You will need to provide some information before you can get started. This tool helps you to store your citations in one place and even offers a preview of many sources. The tool helps you to create citations with quick step-by-step instructions. Here is a video which shows you how to create citations using NoodleTools.

Another helpful tool you might already be familiar with EasyBib ( www.easybib.com). This is a wonderful citation creation tool, but did you know that you store your citations in EasyBib as well? You will need to create a free account by clicking “Create Account” in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Then, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Create Citation List” to get started.

However, it is important to remember that the information from NoodleTools and EasyBib is only as good as the information you put into the tool. So if you confuse the publication and article title when you put that information in the too, your citation will be incorrect. For that reason, it is always good to double check your citations when using these tools.