Writing / References
Citation Generator: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard
Type in the details of a book, journal article, web page, or online video and get the reference in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18, or Harvard, with the in-text citation and a list you can copy straight into your document.
Citation Generator: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard: The generator formats what you type; it does not look anything up, so it never invents details. Each style follows its current edition: APA 7th, MLA 9th, the Chicago Manual of Style 18th edition (notes and bibliography), and Harvard as set out in Cite Them Right, 13th edition. The rules for author lists, dates, page ranges, DOIs, and punctuation are tested against the examples each style's own guide publishes. Runs 100% locally in your browser with zero server file uploads.
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What each style puts first
APA and Harvard are author-date styles: the year follows the author's name, because readers in the sciences want to see how recent a source is. MLA puts the author and title first and the date near the end, and cites page numbers rather than years in the text. Chicago's notes and bibliography system puts a full citation in a footnote the first time a source appears, and an alphabetical bibliography at the end.
Whatever the style, the reference list is sorted alphabetically by the first author's family name, or by title when there is no author, which is how the list here is ordered.
Getting the details right
Take details from the source itself: the title page and copyright page of a book, the first page of an article, the byline and date of a web page. Family names with particles, such as van Gogh or de la Cruz, are filed as the person or their language does; enter the particle with the family name if it belongs there.
Keep a running list while you research rather than rebuilding it at the end. To check the length of the finished essay, use the word counter, and the words to pages calculator shows how many pages it fills.
How to use it
- Choose the citation style and the kind of source.
- Fill in the authors, title, date, and the other details from the source itself.
- Copy the reference with its italics, or add it to your list and copy the whole list, sorted alphabetically.
Privacy & limitations
Everything is formatted in your browser. Your list of sources is kept only in this browser.
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Frequently asked questions
Which style should I use?
The one your teacher, department, or journal asks for. Broadly, APA is common in psychology, education, and the social sciences; MLA in literature and languages; Chicago in history and the arts; and Harvard, in one of its many versions, in UK and Australian universities. If your institution has its own Harvard guide, follow it: versions differ in small details.
Why doesn't it fix the capitals in my titles?
Changing case automatically gets proper nouns, acronyms, and words like iPhone wrong. APA and Harvard want sentence case for the titles of books, articles, and pages, with capitals only for the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns; MLA and Chicago want title case. Type the title in the case your style needs.
How many authors are listed?
APA lists up to 20 authors, then the first 19, an ellipsis, and the last. MLA lists one or two, then the first followed by et al. Chicago lists up to six in a bibliography, then the first three and et al. Cite Them Right Harvard lists them all in the reference and uses et al. in the text from four authors.
Should I include a DOI or a URL?
Include a DOI whenever an article or book has one: it is a permanent link that keeps working when websites change. The generator turns any DOI form, such as 10.1037/… or doi:10.1037/…, into the https://doi.org/ link the styles now ask for. Use a URL for web pages, videos, and works without a DOI.
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