Citation Generator

Academic citations follow strict formatting rules that vary by style guide. APA 7th edition (used in social sciences, psychology, education) formats a journal article as: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume(issue), page-page. https://doi.org/xxxxx. MLA 9th edition (used in humanities, literature, languages) uses: Author Last, First. "Article Title." Journal Title, vol. #, no. #, Year, pp. #-#. Chicago/Turabian (used in history, some humanities) offers both notes-bibliography and author-date systems. Harvard referencing (common in UK, Australia) is an author-date system similar to APA but with formatting differences. Each style has specific rules for 10+ source types: books, journal articles, websites, films, interviews, social media posts, and more. Getting a single comma, period, or italic wrong can cost marks on academic papers. This generator automates formatting for all major styles — enter your source details once, and get correctly formatted citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard simultaneously. All processing happens in your browser.

A typical undergraduate paper requires 10-20 sources, a master's thesis 50-100, and a doctoral dissertation 200+. Managing these references manually is error-prone and time-consuming. Key practices for efficient citation management: collect citation details as you research (not at the end), maintain a working bibliography that grows throughout the project, and use consistent source identification (DOI for journal articles is the most reliable permanent identifier). When citing websites, always record the access date because web content can change or disappear. For books, include the edition number for any book beyond the first edition. Page numbers are required for direct quotes in most styles but recommended for paraphrases in APA. In-text citations must match the reference list exactly — every source cited in the text must appear in the references, and vice versa. Common mistakes include inconsistent author name formats (Smith, J. vs Smith, John), missing DOIs for journal articles (required in APA 7), and incorrect capitalization (APA uses sentence case for article titles but title case for journal names). Generate your citations here and copy them directly into your document.