Citation Generator

What this tool does

Citation Generator builds a reference-list citation in APA (7th edition), MLA (9th edition) or Chicago (author-date) style for a book, website or journal article. Fill in whichever fields apply to your source type and style, and the generator applies that style’s correct punctuation, ordering and emphasis rules to produce a ready-to-paste citation.

Each citation style has its own precise rules for author ordering, punctuation, capitalisation and what gets italicised, and those rules differ depending on whether the source is a book, a website or a journal article. Getting even one comma or the wrong capitalisation style wrong is a common, easy-to-miss mistake in student and academic writing.

This generator asks only for the fields that actually apply to the source type and style you pick: a website citation shows a URL and access date field, a journal article shows volume, issue and page fields, and a book shows a publisher field. It then assembles the citation using the correct ordering and punctuation for APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition or Chicago author-date style, with italicised elements shown as Markdown asterisks so the formatting carries over cleanly when pasted into a document that supports Markdown, or can simply be read and manually italicised otherwise.

How to use Citation Generator

1. Choose a Citation style: APA, MLA or Chicago.
2. Choose a Source type: website, book or journal article.
3. Fill in the author’s last and first name, or leave them blank for a source with no listed author.
4. Enter the Year published and Title, plus whichever extra fields appear for your source type (publisher, site name, URL, journal details).
5. Review the generated citation at the bottom of the panel.
6. Copy the citation and paste it into your reference list, converting the Markdown asterisks to italics if your document doesn’t render Markdown automatically.

Tips for better results

• Leave the author fields blank for sources with no named author; all three styles have an established way of starting the citation with the title instead.
• For a website, including the access date matters most for MLA, which explicitly calls for it when a page could change over time; APA and Chicago generally omit it for stable web pages.
• Double-check the exact year format and capitalisation your instructor expects, since some style guides are updated between editions and small institutional preferences can vary.
• For a journal article, make sure volume and issue are entered as plain numbers; the generator adds the correct surrounding punctuation automatically.

Common use cases

• Building a correctly formatted reference list entry for an essay, dissertation or report.
• Converting a rough note about a source into a proper citation in the style a course requires.
• Quickly checking whether a citation you already wrote by hand matches the expected style rules.
• Teaching the differences between APA, MLA and Chicago citation formats side by side.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Mixing fields meant for one source type into another, for example filling in a publisher for a website citation, which most styles do not expect for that source type.
• Forgetting that MLA and APA order the author’s name differently from how most people write it in running text; always let the generator place the surname first as each style requires.
• Assuming one citation style’s punctuation rules apply to another; a period, comma or italics placement that is correct in APA can be wrong in MLA or Chicago.