MLA vs Chicago

• In-text citation: MLA — (Rasch and Born 685); Chicago — a footnote: ¹ Björn Rasch and Jan Born, … 685..
• Reference list title: MLA — Works Cited; Chicago — Bibliography.
• Ordering: MLA alphabetizes by author; Chicago alphabetizes by author.
• MLA traits: Only the first author's name is inverted; co-authors appear in natural order with full first names; Titles use Title Case — capitalize all principal words.
• Chicago traits: First author inverted, additional authors in natural order; Titles use Title Case; articles in quotes, containers in italics.

Identical facts, different arrangement — note the author names, casing, and where the date sits. Already have a citation in one style? Convert it to the other in one click.

MLA: MLA cites in the text with author and page: (Alvarez 12) — no comma, no year. Sources without page numbers (most web sources) cite the author alone: (Alvarez). Three or more authors use et al.: (Harris et al. 360).

Chicago: Chicago's notes-bibliography system cites with footnotes: a superscript number in the text pointing to a note with the source details and page. The bibliography entry shown here contains everything the footnote needs — un-invert the author's name and swap most periods for commas to form the note.

Whatever your assignment, department, or journal requires — that overrules everything. When the choice is genuinely yours: pick MLA if your work sits in English, literature, languages, and the humanities, and Chicago for history, art history, and publishing. Structurally, choose MLA when where a passage lives in the text — page-level precision matters more to your readers, and Chicago when uninterrupted prose — discussion happens in the notes does.

Then be perfectly consistent — a clean paper in either style beats a hybrid of both, and mixed styles are the first thing graders notice. Since the generator renders both styles from one paste, switching late costs nothing.