text: what are the advantages of using apa formatting for academic papers? what aspect of apa formatting do you find apa formatting and academic papers personally, i switched from apa to chicago style sometime around my second year of college.  depending on the major, one system may be preferred (or even required) over the other.  my sense of the main/largest difference between the two are in the required citation format: apa citations are in-line while chicago citations are footnotes.  with modern word processing software, footnotes are no longer the pain that they used to be, so i dont think in-line citations (e.g. "i went to the store. (bryson 2)") is not significantly easier to use than footnotes.  why chicago is better: the reason i prefer using chicago style and the footnote method is because the body of my my academic papers are less cluttered by citations after every sentence. also, i think footnotes "look" more academic..but that's just me.  and, um, i live and went to school in chicago (probably the best reason:) ).  why apa is better: if you are a science major, if you dont have a readily accessible and easily usable word processing program (like word), if you prefer the simplicity of the apa citations, if your professor likes it (very important).