MLA to APA Converter
Paste an MLA Works Cited entry and get the APA 7 reference. Free MLA to APA converter that can restore authors hidden by et al. when the entry has a DOI.
Paste an MLA entry to get an APA reference
What changes from MLA to APA
Moving a paper from MLA to APA changes every reference. The year moves up beside the authors, first names shrink to initials, titles drop to sentence case, and the quotation marks around article titles go. CiteTools reads the MLA entry, identifies each part, and writes the APA 7 reference.
- Author names: MLA writes LeCun, Yann and APA writes LeCun, Y. Every author is inverted and an ampersand joins the last two.
- Author count: MLA shortens three or more authors to et al. APA lists up to 20, so the missing names have to come back.
- Date: MLA places the date near the end of the entry. APA places the year in parentheses after the authors.
- Titles: MLA uses title case and puts article titles in quotation marks. APA uses sentence case and drops the quotation marks.
- Volume and issue: MLA writes vol. 521, no. 7553. APA writes 521(7553), with the volume in italics.
- Pages: MLA writes pp. 436–44. APA writes the full range, 436–444.
The same reference, before and after
Before, in MLA
LeCun, Yann, et al. “Deep Learning.” Nature, vol. 521, no. 7553, May 2015, pp. 436–44, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.
After, in APA
LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436–444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539
What an MLA entry leaves out
An MLA entry with three or more authors names only the first and adds et al. APA has to list them. When the entry includes a DOI that matches it, CiteTools looks the work up and restores the author list from the publisher’s record. Without a DOI the other authors may not be found, and a warning tells you so. Check the title capitals too: a title in title case is lowered to sentence case, but a title of one or two words is left as written.
Frequently asked questions
My MLA entry says et al. Will APA list every author?
When the entry has a DOI that matches it, CiteTools takes the author list from the publisher’s record, and APA prints up to 20 names. Without a DOI the other authors may be missing, and a warning tells you so. Add them before you use the reference.
Can I convert a whole Works Cited page?
Yes. Paste up to 100 entries separated by blank lines. A list does not show the per-entry warning, so review each entry that used et al. and had no DOI.
Do I also need to change the in-text citations?
Yes. MLA cites the author and page, as in (LeCun et al. 438). APA cites the author and year, as in (LeCun et al., 2015), and adds the page for a direct quotation.