References in three styles at once
Fill in the details of your source once and get the reference in your chosen style (APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition or Chicago 18th edition (notes and bibliography)) plus the other two underneath, so switching styles later costs nothing. Each comes with its in-text citation or short note.
Use Copy in the toolbar to copy with formatting: italics for book and journal titles are preserved when you paste into Word, Google Docs or Pages. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
What the generator handles
- Author names typed as “First Last” or “Last, First”, including particles (van Beethoven, de la Cruz) and suffixes (Jr.). Put organisations in braces ({World Health Organization}) so they aren’t split into first and last names.
- Author lists: APA lists up to 20 authors and uses an ellipsis after 19; MLA uses “et al.” for three or more; Chicago 18 lists up to six and shortens seven or more to three plus “et al.”
- Title capitalisation: APA uses sentence case for article and book titles (with the word after a colon capitalised); MLA and Chicago use title case. Turn this off if your title is already correctly capitalised.
- DOIs are formatted as https://doi.org/ links; MLA drops “https://” from URLs as the handbook recommends.
- Dates: APA puts the date after the author; MLA uses day–month–year with abbreviated months; Chicago spells out the month.
Always check the result
Style guides have many special cases (translated works, editors, reprints, missing dates, social media posts). The generator covers the most common source types correctly; for anything unusual, compare with your style manual or your institution’s guide. Proper nouns in titles need to stay capitalised in APA sentence case: fix them by hand if the conversion lowercases them.
Worked example
Here is what the Citation Generator returns for its built-in example. Settings used: Style: APA 7; Source type: Book; Apply the style’s title capitalisation: on. Click Try an example in the tool above to load it, then change it as you like.
Style: apa
Source type: journal
Authors, one per line (“First Last” or “Last, First”; organisations in {braces}): Brysbaert, Marc
Date (YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD): 2019
Title: How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate
Journal, website or newspaper name: Journal of Memory and Language
Volume: 109
Pages: 104047
DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
Apply the style’s title capitalisation: true| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Style | APA |
| Source | Journal article |
Questions
How do I cite a website in APA 7?
Author. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL. Choose “Web page”, fill in the fields and the generator formats it for you.
How do I enter an organisation as the author?
Put the name in braces, like {World Health Organization}, so it is not treated as a first and last name.
Does it keep italics when I paste into Word?
Yes. Use the Copy button in the result toolbar; it copies formatted text that keeps italics.
Which edition of each style is used?
APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition and the Chicago Manual of Style 18th edition (2024).
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