Citation Generator

The main differences between styles are mechanical rather than conceptual. APA lists up to 20 authors before abbreviating and joins the final two with an ampersand; MLA switches to et al. after just two authors; Chicago uses et al. beyond three. APA converts titles to sentence case, keeping only the first word and proper nouns capitalised, while MLA and Chicago use title case. Web sources need care: when no author is named, the organisation or site takes the author position, and a missing date becomes n.d. Access dates are required by MLA and Harvard for online sources but are optional in APA unless the content is likely to change. Institutions frequently add their own house rules, so always check the output against your department’s style sheet before submitting.

Each style orders the same elements differently. APA puts the date immediately after the author and uses sentence case for titles; MLA places the date near the end and uses title case in quotation marks; Chicago and Harvard sit between the two. The tool applies each style’s rules for author inversion, initials, punctuation and the point at which et al. replaces a list of names.

Covers websites, books and journal articles in four styles — not every source type, such as films, interviews, datasets or conference papers. Institutions frequently add house rules for translators, editions and access dates, so always check the output against your department’s style sheet.

A web page by Jane Doe and John A. Smith from 2025 becomes “Doe, J., & Smith, J. A. (2025). The effects of sleep on memory. Sleep Research Today. https://…” in APA 7, with the in-text citation (Doe & Smith, 2025).

1. Choose the type of source and the style your course requires.
2. Enter the author, title, year and any other details you have.
3. Copy the formatted reference into your bibliography.
4. Re-apply italics in your document, since copied text is plain.

• Using title case for an APA reference title, which should be sentence case.
• Forgetting the hanging indent required in APA, MLA and Chicago reference lists.
• Leaving out the access date on a web source in MLA or Harvard.
• Citing a DOI as a bare number instead of a full https://doi.org/ link.

The Citation Generator formats references in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17 and Harvard from the details you enter. Every source produces all four styles at once plus the matching in-text citations, so you can see how the same source is treated across systems.

Students, researchers and writers building a bibliography or reference list.

• Four styles generated at once, not one at a time.
• Handles author-name conventions correctly, including the et al. thresholds.
• Applies sentence case for APA and title case for MLA automatically.
• Gives you the in-text citation as well as the full reference.

• Building a reference list for an essay or dissertation.
• Converting a bibliography from one style to another.
• Citing a web page that has no obvious author or date.
• Checking how a journal article should be formatted with volume and issue.