Generate a properly formatted citation in APA, MLA, or Chicago style from a website, book, or journal article — instantly, right in your browser.
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This tool builds a properly formatted citation for a website, book, or journal article in one of three widely used academic styles: APA (7th edition), MLA (9th edition), or Chicago (Author-Date, 17th edition). Choose your style and source type, fill in the author, title, and the handful of other details that style requires (like a URL for a website, a publisher for a book, or a volume and page range for a journal article), and the tool assembles the citation with the correct punctuation, capitalization, and italics for that style — differences that are easy to get wrong when formatting by hand, since each style has its own rules for author name order, title capitalization, and where italics apply. This covers the common single-author case for each source type; sources with multiple authors, no listed author, or other special cases follow additional rules not covered here, so always check your style guide or instructor's requirements for those situations. Nothing you type is ever sent anywhere — the citation is assembled entirely inside your browser using JavaScript.
Every citation style exists to solve the same basic problem — letting a reader trace a claim back to its source — but the three major styles taught in schools and universities format that information differently because they were built for different academic communities with different priorities. APA (American Psychological Association) style dominates in the social sciences, education, and nursing, and places the publication year immediately after the author's name in parentheses, reflecting how quickly research in those fields can become outdated and how important recency is to readers evaluating a source. MLA (Modern Language Association) style is the standard in the humanities — literature, languages, cultural studies — and instead emphasizes author and page number for pinpointing exact passages in a text, since close reading of specific wording matters more in literary analysis than publication recency. Chicago style, used widely in history and some social sciences, offers two different systems (notes-bibliography and author-date); this tool uses the author-date variant, which resembles APA's parenthetical approach but with its own distinct punctuation and formatting conventions.
Beyond just where the year appears, the styles differ in details that are easy to overlook when formatting by hand: APA capitalizes only the first word of an article or webpage title (plus the first word after a colon and any proper nouns) — called sentence case — while MLA and Chicago use title case, capitalizing most major words. Author names also flip differently: APA abbreviates first names to initials (Smith, J.), while MLA and Chicago typically spell out the full first name (Smith, Jane) for the first author listed. Italics are used for standalone works — books, journal names, full websites — but not for the titles of shorter works like journal articles or individual webpages, which usually appear in quotation marks in MLA and Chicago (APA instead uses neither italics nor quotation marks for those shorter titles, relying on sentence-case formatting alone to distinguish them).
The reason precise formatting matters isn't mere pedantry: a consistent citation style lets a reader scan a bibliography and immediately parse which part is the author, which is the title, and which is the publication venue, without having to puzzle over unfamiliar punctuation each time. Academic instructors and journal editors enforce a single consistent style throughout a document specifically so that every citation follows the same predictable pattern, making the whole reference list easier to scan and verify.
None of the three styles stays perfectly static, either — APA moved from a 6th to a 7th edition in 2019 with meaningful changes to how digital sources are cited, and MLA has revised its core recommendations multiple times as citing websites and other digital sources became the norm rather than the exception. This tool follows the current editions of each style (APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago 17th) for the common single-author case, but style guides do get updated, and individual instructors or publications sometimes layer their own additional preferences on top of the base style — which is exactly why double-checking a generated citation against your specific style guide or assignment instructions remains good practice, especially for graded academic work.
APA (7th edition), MLA (9th edition), and Chicago (Author-Date, 17th edition) — the three styles most commonly required in schools and universities, for websites, books, and journal articles.
No. It covers the common single-author case for websites, books, and journal articles. Sources with multiple authors, no listed author, organizational authors, edited volumes, or other special cases follow additional rules not covered here — check your style guide or ask your instructor for those situations.
Enter it as "Last name, First name" (for example, "Smith, Jane") — the tool reformats it automatically for whichever citation style you choose, since APA, MLA, and Chicago each present author names slightly differently.
No. The citation is built entirely inside your browser using JavaScript, and nothing you enter is ever transmitted, logged, or saved.
Yes. This tool applies the standard formatting rules for the common case, but always compare against your institution's style guide or ask your instructor, especially for graded work, since style guides are occasionally updated and instructors sometimes have their own formatting preferences.