WHY IS APA USED IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND OTHER SCIENCE COURSES INSTEAD OF MLA?
by Kathy McLain, M.A.

APA is a style guide and documentation format designed by the American Psychological Association for social scientists.  However, in many colleges and universities, APA is also the designated style guide for nursing and other science disciplines.  Because different disciplines have different formatting and documentation needs, different style guides have been developed.  APA's in-text parenthetical documentation provides not only the author's last name and page number, but the citation also gives the date the study was published.  These publication dates are more important in science disciplines than in humanities areas and are especially helpful when included in the text to help readers trace the progression of research findings in a given science area.  APA also provides for use of headings for random access to sections of material within the text of the research articles.  The style guide also provides for the use of charts, tables, and other data in the text or placed in appendixes at the back of the paper.