APA verses MLA

The Modern Language Association (MLA) style of paper has its differences and similarities with the American Psychological Association (APA) style. One of the major differences most people point out right away is the reason behind the styles. MLA style papers are most common in research in literature, languages, linguistic, and compositions studies. While APA is known as a form of documenting used in psychology, education, economics, and sociology. Although this is on of the well known differences it is not the only one. That being said these two writing styles also have their similarities.
Let’s talk about the structure of both writing styles. For an MLA style paper, you have the option for a cover page, while in the APA paper it is mandatory. The cover page in the APA paper contains a running head that is shorter than the whole title, a page number, their full title, the researchers name, and the institution. In MLA the researchers name, title, course title, and date is all placed in the upper left hand corner of the first page.
In the two writing styles it is mandatory that you use the last name of the author in any in-text citation. If you use APA Style, you also need to add the year of publication, but doesn’t require page numbers for the paraphrase or summary. With both styles, it is realized that the in-text citation is a way of providing your readers an easy way to locate the full quotation in the Reference List page(APA) or Works Cited page(MLA) at the end of the paper. You only need brief general details about the source for an in-text citation. An APA paper requires and abstract as well. An abstract is a brief summary of the paper.
Both styles require you to put the page number in the upper right corner of each page, but each style has distinct information. With APA Style, you must attach a running title to the left of the page number