Comparison of the MLA and the APA Writing Formats - Essay Example

Several writing formats have been created to organize documents that have used other sources for research. Two popular formats are the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Psychological Association (APA). The Modern Language Association was founded in 1833 as an advocacy organization for the study of literature and modern language. Its seat of origin is at the John Hopkins University (Georgia Southern University, n.d.). MLA is the format recommended for use in writings in the humanities (philosophy, history, literature and communication) (University of Massachussets Libraries, 1999).

It is the writing format used by newsletter reporters, journalists, literature teachers, teachers in Linguistics and researchers in the fields of Mass Communicaiton and Media Studies (Georgia Southern State University, n.d.). On the other hand, The American Psychological Association was founded in 1892 in Clark University in Worchester, Massachusetts by 26 men. The university president at that time was G. Stanley Hall, a psychologist (Georgia Southern State University, n.d.). The association has endorsed a documentation style designed for many social science and related documents (Anthropology, Education, Liguistics, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology).

It is used for writing medical reports, psychology papers, and researchers in the fields of Science, Criminal Justice and Economics, among others. Aside from the citation of sources, writing formats also have instructions for writing end-of-text references, headings, etc. This essay will focus on the writing of in-text citations. General Rules: Generally, in-text citations follow sentences of ideas that come from another source, enclosed in parenthesis. For APA, the author’s last name and the year of publication are indicated.

For example: Dawson (2009) contends that people are motivated when they enjoy their work and have the strong drive to achieve the goals they set for themselves. It can also be written in another way: People are motivated when they enjoy their work and have the strong drive to achieve the goals they set for themselves (Dawson, 2009). The general idea of this sentence was taken from a source authored by Dawson (his last name) which was published in 2009. The idea was paraphrased but the idea remains the same.

Readers who want to read more about the original writings of Dawson from its source may check out the Reference list at the end of the document where the details of Dawson’s book or article is provided. In case a sentence or two was taken word for word from the source and written in the document, these should be within quotation marks followed by the a parenthetical in-text citation that includes the page number where it was taken. For example: “When workers are well-motivated, they become more productive and this translates to better business” (Dawson,2009, p. 13). Another way to write this is as follows: Dawson claims that “when workers are well-motivated, they become more productive and this translates to better business” (2009, p. 13). The author’s name is only written once in the sentence to avoid being redundant.

The quoted sentence was taken from page 13 of Dawson’s book or article. Notice that the in-text-citation is outside the quotations but the punctuation comes after the close parenthesis of the citation. Similarly, for MLA, in-text citation