CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: MLA

  • Citation Styles Compared: APA, MLA, Chicago, Vancouver

    Citation styles are standardised systems that prescribe how to format in-text citations and reference entries so that sources are credited consistently and can be retrieved reliably. The major styles — APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, the Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition, and Vancouver — share the same underlying data elements but differ in how those elements are ordered, punctuated and signalled in the text.

    Choosing a style is rarely a free decision: each discipline has settled on conventions, and journals, publishers and institutions specify which to use. The skill is applying the chosen style consistently, not memorising all of them.

    The four major styles at a glance

    Style Typical disciplines In-text format End-of-text list
    APA 7 Psychology, education, social sciences Author–date: (Author, Year) References, alphabetical
    MLA 9 Humanities, languages, literature Author–page: (Author 14) Works Cited, alphabetical
    Chicago 17 History, arts, some social sciences Notes-bibliography (footnotes) or author–date Bibliography or References
    Vancouver / ICMJE Medicine, biomedical sciences Numeric: [1] or superscript References, by order of citation

    APA 7th edition

    APA is an author–date style dominant in psychology and the social sciences. In-text citations carry the author surname and year, with a page number for direct quotations. The end list is titled “References”, alphabetised by surname, with a strong emphasis on the publication year because currency matters in empirical fields. DOIs are included as full https links.

    MLA 9th edition

    MLA serves the humanities, where the location of a phrase within a work often matters more than the year. Its in-text citation is author–page — (Author 14) — and the end list is titled “Works Cited”. MLA 9 organises an entry around a template of “core elements” (author, title of source, title of container, and so on), which makes it adaptable to non-traditional sources.

    Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition

    Chicago is distinctive for offering two complete systems:

    • Notes–bibliography. Used in history and the arts. Citations appear as numbered footnotes or endnotes, with a full bibliography at the end. This suits narrative disciplines where discursive notes add value.
    • Author–date. Used in the sciences and some social sciences, this variant works like APA — an in-text (Author Year) marker keyed to an alphabetical reference list.

    The existence of two Chicago systems is the most common source of confusion; always confirm which one a publisher expects.

    Vancouver and ICMJE

    Vancouver is the numeric style of medicine and the biomedical sciences, aligned with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Sources are numbered in order of first appearance and listed in that order. This keeps dense clinical text uncluttered — a paper may cite dozens of sources per page — at the cost of hiding authorship behind a number. The mechanics of numeric versus author–date markers are detailed in in-text citations versus the reference list.

    Choosing the right style

    The decision usually follows a simple hierarchy:

    • Follow the journal or publisher first. Their author guidelines override personal preference.
    • Then follow your discipline. Social sciences default to APA, humanities to MLA, history to Chicago notes-bibliography, medicine to Vancouver.
    • Then follow your institution. A department or supervisor may mandate a house style.
    • Apply it consistently. Mixing styles within one document is itself an error, regardless of which you choose.

    Whatever style applies, the underlying data — author, year, title, container, persistent identifier — stays the same; only the presentation changes. Recording those elements accurately, and disambiguating authors with an ORCID iD, is what makes switching styles painless. This consistency also supports research integrity by keeping every claim traceable to a retrievable source. Practical help for applying a style is in our resources for authors.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is the difference between APA and MLA?

    APA uses author–date in-text citations and is standard in the social sciences, emphasising the year of publication. MLA uses author–page citations and is standard in the humanities, emphasising the location of material within a source. Their end lists are “References” and “Works Cited” respectively.

    Why does Chicago have two systems?

    Chicago offers a notes-bibliography system, suited to history and the arts where footnotes carry discursive comment, and an author–date system suited to the sciences. The two serve different writing cultures, so always confirm which variant a publisher requires.

    Which citation style should I use?

    Use the style your target journal, publisher or institution specifies; if none is mandated, follow your discipline’s convention. The most important rule is to apply a single style consistently throughout the document.

    Do all styles include a DOI?

    The major styles all accommodate persistent identifiers such as DOIs, because they make references durable and retrievable. The exact placement and formatting differ by style. See the CASRAI dictionary for standardised term definitions.

  • MLA Format Essentials and the Works Cited List

    MLA format is the referencing style of the Modern Language Association, set out in the MLA Handbook (9th edition, 2021). It pairs an author–page in-text citation with an alphabetical “Works Cited” list, and builds every entry from one flexible template of core elements rather than from a separate rule for each source type. MLA is the standard in literature, languages, cultural studies and much of the humanities.

    The defining idea of modern MLA is that you describe a source by walking through the same ordered slots every time. This makes MLA unusually adaptable to new media. To see where MLA sits among the major systems, read it alongside our comparison of APA, MLA, Chicago and Vancouver.

    In-text citation: author and page

    MLA in-text citations give the author’s surname and a page number, with no comma between them: (Smith 14). If the author is named in the sentence, only the page appears in brackets: Smith argues that the archive is incomplete (14). The absence of a date in the in-text citation is a deliberate humanities convention — a fourteenth-century poem and a modern reading of it are weighed by argument, not recency.

    The container model

    The heart of MLA 9 is the container. A container is the larger work that holds the source you are citing: a journal that holds an article, a book that holds a chapter, a website that holds a page, a streaming platform that holds a film. You describe the source, then describe its container. A source can sit inside two containers — an article inside a journal, inside a database — and you describe both in turn. This nesting is what lets one template handle a poem in an anthology, an episode on a streaming service, or a tweet, without inventing new rules.

    The nine core elements

    Every Works Cited entry is assembled from up to nine core elements, in this fixed order, each followed by its own punctuation mark:

    Order Core element Ends with
    1 Author. full stop
    2 Title of source. full stop
    3 Title of container, comma
    4 Contributor, comma
    5 Version, comma
    6 Number, comma
    7 Publisher, comma
    8 Publication date, comma
    9 Location. full stop

    You include only the elements that apply to your source and skip the rest, keeping the order intact. A journal article therefore reads: Smith, Jane. “Reading the Incomplete Archive.” Journal of Literary Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, 2021, pp. 220–38. The author and source title come first, then the container with its number, date and “location” — here, the page range.

    Works Cited anatomy

    The Works Cited list is alphabetical by author surname, double-spaced, with a hanging indent — formatting it shares with APA, even though the entry contents differ. “Location” is MLA’s catch-all for where the source sits: page numbers for print, a DOI or URL for online sources, even a physical place for a performance or artwork. MLA 9 recommends including a DOI where one exists, formatted as a full doi.org link, because a stable identifier ties the entry to the durable scholarly record.

    How MLA differs from APA

    The two styles answer different disciplinary needs. APA’s author–date system foregrounds when a study was published, because empirical evidence ages; MLA’s author–page system foregrounds where in the text a passage sits, because close reading depends on pointing to exact lines. APA title-cases journal names but sentence-cases article titles; MLA uses title case throughout and puts article and chapter titles in quotation marks. The choice between them is set by your discipline and your editor, as our APA essentials guide explains for the social sciences.

    Whatever the style, the underlying questions about who is credited and how contributions are recorded are constant — which is why CASRAI’s work on authorship and credit sits beneath every referencing system, not above any one of them.

    Frequently asked questions

    What if a source has no page numbers?

    Omit the page number from the in-text citation and use the author’s name alone: (Smith). If the source has numbered paragraphs or sections, you may cite those with a label, such as (Smith, par. 4). Do not count unnumbered pages yourself.

    How do I cite a source inside a database?

    Use two containers. Describe the article and its journal (the first container), then add the database as a second container with the DOI or stable URL as the location. This is exactly the nesting the container model was designed for.

    Does MLA use “et al.” for multiple authors?

    Yes. For three or more authors, name the first author followed by “et al.” in both the in-text citation and the Works Cited entry. Two authors are both named, joined by “and”.

    Should I include URLs in MLA?

    MLA 9 recommends including a DOI where available, and otherwise a stable URL, as the location element. You may drop the “https://” prefix per the handbook’s guidance. Check our author guidance if you are unsure how to describe an unusual online output.

  • How to Cite a Website Correctly

    How to cite a website comes down to capturing five pieces of metadata — author, title, site name, date and URL — plus an access date, then formatting them for your chosen style. Because web pages can change or vanish, the access date and a stable URL matter more than for print sources.

    Follow the steps below, then use the worked examples in APA, MLA and Harvard.

    Step 1: Record the metadata

    Before you format anything, gather:

    • Author — a person or, failing that, the organisation responsible.
    • Title — the title of the specific page, not the whole site.
    • Site name — the publisher or container.
    • Date — publication or last-updated date.
    • URL — the direct, stable link (a DOI or permalink if available).
    • Access date — the day you viewed it.

    Step 2: Identify the author or fall back sensibly

    If no individual is named, use the organisation as author. If even that is unclear, move the page title to the author position. Never invent an author. Our practitioner guide to citing sources covers these fallbacks in depth.

    Step 3: Format for your style

    The same metadata is arranged differently in each style. Worked examples:

    • APA: Smith, J. (2021, March 4). Patterns of research participation. Research Standards Hub. https://example.org/patterns
    • MLA: Smith, Jane. “Patterns of Research Participation.” Research Standards Hub, 4 Mar. 2021, example.org/patterns. Accessed 19 June 2026.
    • Harvard: Smith, J. (2021) Patterns of research participation. Available at: https://example.org/patterns (Accessed: 19 June 2026).

    For the full APA rules behind that example, see our APA essentials guide, and for the author-date logic, Harvard referencing.

    Step 4: Handle missing dates and authors

    Web pages often lack a clean date or byline. Standard substitutions:

    Missing element APA MLA / Harvard
    No date (n.d.) Omit date; rely on access date
    No author Use title in author position Use organisation, then title
    No page title Describe content in brackets Describe content in brackets

    The access date does real work here: it tells a reader which version of a changeable page you relied on.

    Step 5: Add the in-text citation

    Pair the reference with the in-text marker your style uses — (Smith, 2021) in APA and Harvard, (Smith) in MLA. Where there is no author, use a short form of the title. Numeric styles such as IEEE and AMA handle web sources with the same numbered markers they use for print.

    Step 6: Verify the link is stable

    Prefer a DOI or permalink over a long session URL. If the page may move, note that an archived copy exists. Consistency across all your web citations is the final check our for authors guidance recommends.

    How web citation fits the wider record

    Well-formed web references plug into structured metadata: controlled terms in our dictionary and contributor roles via CRediT describe the rest of an output. For more on formatting choices, see citation styles compared and the research outputs category.

    Frequently asked questions

    Do I always need an access date?

    MLA and Harvard recommend one for web pages; APA requires it only when the content is likely to change and is not archived. When in doubt, include it.

    What if there is no publication date?

    Use (n.d.) in APA, or omit the date and rely on the access date in MLA and Harvard. Do not guess a date.

    Should I cite the homepage or the specific page?

    Cite the specific page you used. Reserve the homepage URL for when you are referring to the site as a whole.

    How do I cite a page with no author at all?

    Move the title into the author position, or use the organisation responsible for the site. Never fabricate authorship.