The main reason there are different citation styles is that different disciplines place emphasis on the importance of different parts of the citation. For example, for in-text citations, APA includes the author's name and the year of publication, indicating the recency of the publication is important. MLA, in contrast, cites the author's name and the page the quote, summary or paraphrase is from, indicating that the ability to find the author's exact words is most important. In fact, scholars that use the MLA format often use direct quotes more frequently than other disciplines.
Another reason why there are different citation styles is that some styles were developed and required by major journals in the field. For example, the American Medical Journal, has its own citation requirements. That journal is so important in the field that many other medical journals adopted its style requirements over the years.
It is important to learn the standards of your discipline.
In many of your lower division courses, you used APA as a "standard" citation format. But for your upper-level courses, you will learn that different disciplines use different citation formats. Some example of different citation formats are:
APA (American Psychological Association) - used by Education, Psychology, and Social Sciences
MLA (Modern Language Associate) - used by English, foreign language and humanities classes.
Chicago/Turabian - used by Business, History, and the Fine Arts.
CSE (Council of Science Editors) - used by many of the sciences.
ACS (American Chemical Society) - used in Chemistry
AMA (American Medical Association) - used by medical professionals.
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