Citation Generator

Features

• Four major citation styles
• Five source types including chapters and news
• Reference list entry and in-text citation
• Bibliography builder with alphabetical sorting
• Saved on your device between visits

How to use it

1. Choose a style and source type.
2. Fill in the fields you have, blanks are omitted.
3. Copy the reference, or add it to the bibliography.
4. Download the finished bibliography when done.

Which style, and why they differ

The styles encode different disciplinary priorities. APA puts the year immediately after the author because in the sciences the recency of a finding matters enormously. MLA omits the year from the in-text citation and gives a page number instead, because literary scholarship cares about locating a passage rather than dating a claim. Chicago's notes-bibliography system uses footnotes, which suits history where a citation often carries commentary as well as a source.

Author formatting is where most errors creep in. APA uses initials only and an ampersand before the final author; MLA spells out first names and uses “and”; both invert only the first author's name. APA switched at the 7th edition to listing up to 20 authors before using an ellipsis, where the 6th edition stopped at seven, a change that still catches people using older templates.

Two practical points. Always prefer a DOI to a URL when one exists: DOIs are permanent identifiers that survive a journal moving its site, which URLs frequently do not. And treat any generated citation as a first draft, automated tools including this one cannot verify that the metadata you entered is correct, cannot know whether a source has been retracted, and handle unusual source types imperfectly. Check the output against your institution's style guide before submitting anything that is being marked.