MLA vs IEEE

• In-text citation: MLA — (Rasch and Born 685); IEEE — [1].
• Reference list title: MLA — Works Cited; IEEE — References.
• Ordering: MLA alphabetizes by author; IEEE numbers entries in citation order.
• 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.
• IEEE traits: Initials come before surnames: M. Alvarez; Paper titles in quotation marks with sentence-style capitalization; containers italicized.

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).

IEEE: IEEE cites in the text with bracketed numbers in order of first appearance: as shown in [1], consolidation requires sleep [2], [5]–[7]. The same number is reused for every later citation of that source, and the reference list is numbered to match — never alphabetized.

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 IEEE for electrical engineering, computer science, and technical fields. Structurally, choose MLA when where a passage lives in the text — page-level precision matters more to your readers, and IEEE when compactness — citations never interrupt technical prose 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.