Citation Generator
Free citation generator for APA 7 and 6, MLA 9 and Chicago 18: enter a book, article, web page or video, or format a whole BibTeX or RIS file.
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Citation generator
APA, MLA and Chicago from one form, or format a whole BibTeX/RIS bibliography. Nothing is fetched from the web, so every detail comes from you or your file.
Source details
| Given name(s) | Family name | Group | Remove |
|---|---|---|---|
Tick "Group" for an organisation (put its full name in the family-name box). Leave empty when no author is known.
Enter the source details
Fill in at least a title or an author; the citation updates as you type.
Supported styles
About Citation Generator
One place to build a reference in whichever style your course requires, for people who know they need a citation and are not certain which flavour. If you already know the style, the APA, MLA and Chicago pages go straight there. Free online, no account to create, no limit on how many you build. Everything is assembled in the page itself.
How to use Citation Generator
- Pick the styleAPA, MLA or Chicago. If the brief does not say, ask — departments are rarely indifferent about this.
- Choose the source typeBook, journal article or web page. Selecting it changes the fields, because every style treats each kind differently.
- Copy both formsThe in-text citation and the reference-list entry are different strings and you generally need both.
Why the styles differ at all
They come from different disciplines with different priorities. Author-date styles put the year next to the claim because in the sciences recency is part of the argument. Note styles push the apparatus to the foot of the page because in the humanities the prose should not be interrupted. Neither is better; the convention is the point, and using the wrong one reads as not having noticed.
What it does not do
- The entry can only carry what you give it. An omitted edition, translator or DOI simply will not appear.
- Institutions add house rules to published styles, and where the two disagree the institution wins.
- Formatting a citation correctly is not the same as citing appropriately. What to cite, and when, is a matter of academic judgement.
Citation Generator: questions people ask
- Which style should I use?
- Whichever your department specifies, and it will specify. Broadly, APA in the social sciences, MLA in literature and the humanities, Chicago in history — but the brief overrides the convention every time.
- Do I need both the in-text citation and the reference entry?
- Nearly always. The in-text form points the reader at the full entry in your list, and a reference list without in-text citations is a bibliography of things you did not visibly use.
- Does it make Harvard or IEEE citations?
- No. The styles offered are APA 7 and 6, MLA 9, and Chicago 18 in both notes-bibliography and author-date form. Harvard, IEEE, AMA and Vancouver are left out on purpose instead of being approximated, so use a dedicated tool if your course asks for one of those.
Questions about ToolsVerse itself — privacy, cost, what happens to your files — are answered in the frequently asked questions.
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