APA style is just one of the many styles scholars use in academic writing. All the styles are not naturally existence but artifacts. However, they all share the same inner logic as listed below.
In this part, I will show the differences of basic citation between APA, MLA, and IEEE. It is not an exhaustive illustration of the differences and an emphasis of the differences. On the contrary, I try to use these differences to demonstrate how they share common beliefs about citing ideas.
All the discussion is based on the fact that you have read through the APA citation page. if not, please click here.
MLA style is often used in history or literature. Writers in these fields often frequently and directly quote ideas from previous scholars. Why? I think it is simply due to that facts in these areas are not as many as social science and natural science. For example, when you analyze a novel, you base your essays mostly on another man's mental creation (namely, the novel), you synthesize ideas from previous scholars who comment on the novel, and you form your own opinions, which is neither easy to be credited nor easy to be disproved.
Let's take a look at an MLA style paragraph.
The following paragraph and the reference list are excerpted from A Force of Love: A Deconstructionist Reading of Characters in Dickens’s Great Expectations by Emily Schlepp from Northwest University
A Force of Love: A Deconstructionist Reading of Characters in Dickens’s Great Expectations Though literary critics differ on countless aspects of works in the Dickensian canon, one rarely disputed element is Dickens’s masterful ability to create and develop superb characters. While evaluating his works, modernist poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot remarks on the Victorian’s expertise in “[creating] characters of greater intensity than human beings” (Eliot 308). From Oliver Twist to Ebenezer Scrooge, each notable figure in Dickens’s novels not only plays a principal role in the plot of the work itself but also represents significant ideas outside the text. Clearly, critiquing society through artistic expression was not a foreign concept to Dickens; themes of utilitarian economies, the mistreatment of children, and inhumane social structures often manifest themselves in Dickens’s works through harsh chastisement. One major societal flaw often addressed in Dickens’s works, particularly in Great Expectations, is what scholar Dorothy Van Ghent astutely titles “the calculated social crime”; Dickens despised the way in which dismissing truth and bending the rules allowed citizens in power to commit heinous offenses with impunity (Van Ghent 253). Critics note that Dickens dares to believe that an honest and true world—in which good and upstanding people can thrive without the advantages of money and high social status—can exist (Brown 86).
Works Cited
Brown, Julia Prewitt. “Class and Money.” The Victorian Novel, edited by Harold Bloom,Chelsea House Publishers, 2004, pp. 69-89.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Penguin Books, 1996.
Eliot, T. S. “Wilkie Collins and Dickens.” The Victorian Novel, edited by Harold Bloom,
Chelsea House Publishers, 2004, pp. 307-14.
Stange, G. Robert. “Expectations Well Lost: Dickens’ Fable for His Time.” The Victorian Novel, edited by Ian Watt, Oxford UP, 1971, pp. 110-22.
Van Ghent, Dorothy. “Great Expectations.” Dickens: Modern Judgements, edited by A. E. Dyson, Macmillan, 1970, pp. 244-57.
MLA style in-text citation does not include YEAR but page number. It seems to me that because researchers in these field often cite human ideas, these ideas may be misinterpreted, misunderstood, or mis-displayed when they are out of the original context. Therefore, it is better to give the readers exact page number for them to double check (if they would like to do so).
IEEE style is ubiquitous in Engineering. It is of minimalism, using only a bracketed number in the text to cite other papers.
IEEE
The following paragraph and references are excerpted from
Karel, A., Azais, F., Comte, M., Galliere, J. M., Renovell, M., & Singh, K. (2017, May). Detection of resistive open and short defects in FDSOI under delay-based test: Optimal V DD and body biasing conditions. In 2017 22nd IEEE European Test Symposium (ETS) (pp. 1-2). IEEE.
In order to keep up with the frantic pace imposed by Moore's law, FDSOI at 28nm node and beyond is a new innovation in silicon process technology [1]. Resistive open and short defects are supposed to be the most common manufacturing defects in these emerging transistor technologies. These defects have been widely studied in the literature in case of traditional bulk technology. It has been shown that resistive open defects are usually targeted through delay test while resistive short defects are detectable by both logic and delay test [2-3]. In [4-5], a detailed analysis of resistive short defects in FDSOI is performed based on logic test. In this paper, we performed a study based on HSPICE simulations using 28nm UTBB FDSOI gate library to investigate the impact of supply voltage (VDD) and body biasing (BB) in order to determine the optimal operating conditions that enhance the detectability range of these defects.
REFERENCES
[1] Magarshack, P. et al., "UTBB FD-SOI: A process/design symbiosis for breakthrough energy-efficiency," Proc. Design Automation & Test in Europe (DATE), pp.952-957, 2013.
[2] Zhong, S. et al., "Impact of PVT variation on delay test of resistive open and resistive bridge defects," Proc. Int’l Symp. on Defect and Fault Tolerance (DFTS), pp. 230-235, 2013.
[3] Renovell, M., Hue, P., Bertrand, Y., "The concept of resistance interval: a new parametric model for realistic resistive bridging fault", Proc. VLSI Test Symp. (VTS), pp.184-189, 1995.
[4] Karel, A. et al., "Comparative study of Bulk, FDSOI and FinFET technologies in presence of a resistive short defect," Proc. LatinAmerican Test Symp. (LATS), pp. 129-134, 2016.
[5] Karel, A. et al., " Impact of VT and Body- Biasing on resistive short detection in 28nm UTBB FDSOI - LVT and RVT configuration," Proc. Annual Sym. On VLSI (ISVLSI), p.6, 2016.
However, it is very clear where this idea is from. So technical and so "science nerdy." But, still it is sexy.
I believe in engineering world, readers want to read texts as clean as possible, and YEARS and/or AUTHORS are simply noises to them. Besides, using NUMBERS is really science-oriented.