When you start preparing your dissertation, you will also need to follow certain requirements in formats that your professor or instructor will definitely communicate with you beforehand. Odds are your instructor or professor will require you to follow either the APA Style or MLA Style for your dissertation.

These two are most popular styles and formats for dissertations in general. Once you study the formats, you may notice certain similarities between the two. Nevertheless, both have subtle differences that you'll need to pay special attention to.

The format you select should be best suited to the subject title that your dissertation will be based on. Generally, your instructor will select the style of formatting that you'll need to use for your dissertation. Of course, you may have a choice, in which case, you can follow these for deciding which format to use.

The APA Style format was created by the American Psychological Association and it is used for subjects related to the social sciences, i.e. business, economics, law, criminal justice, etc and medical subjects, i.e. nursing and psychology etc. The American Psychological Association website also offers a Publication Manual which includes all the key guidelines & formatting rules of the APA Style.

The MLA style format was created by the Modern Language Association and it is used for subjects related to humanities and liberal arts, i.e. literature, mass communications, media studies etc. Undergraduate students can use the MLA Handbook while graduate students and professionals can use the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing for guidelines to following the MLA Style.

Some of the key differences between the two styles are:

1. The APA style requires a title page, but MLA style does not.

2. The APA style requires an abstract page, while MLA does not. [An abstract is a short summary of your paper.]

3. While you need to use the last name of the author(s) in any in-text citation, you’ll also need to include the year of publication in the APA style, while with MLA, you’ll need to include the page number of the information you cited along with the name of the author(s), without the year of publication.

4. The page number appears in the upper right corner of each page in both styles, however with APA, you must also include a 2-3 word summary of the title of your dissertation to the left of the page number on each page. Whereas with MLA, include the author's name to the left of the page number on each page.

5. When listing each of your sources on the reference list page, use the full last name of the author(s) in each entry. In the APA Style, you also need to list only the initials of the first and middle name of each author; while in MLA style, you spell out the entire first and middle name of each author.