📚 Citation Generator

Generate citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, or Harvard style from a simple form. Enter the URL, title, author (optional), site/publisher, and year — get a properly formatted citation in one click.

What is the citation generator?

Citations credit the sources you reference in academic and professional writing. Different fields use different styles: APA (psychology, social sciences), MLA (humanities), Chicago (history, publishing), Harvard (social sciences in UK and Australia). Each style has its own ordering, punctuation, and abbreviation rules.

How does this citation generator work?

Fill in the form: URL of the source, title (required), author (or leave blank for sites), publisher/site name, and year. Pick the citation style from the dropdown. Click Generate. The properly formatted citation appears in the output.

When should you use this tool?

Use it for academic essays, research papers, blog posts that cite sources, presentations, books, and any context that requires source attribution. Building a habit of citing every source protects you from plagiarism accusations.

Tips & best practices

Always cite even when paraphrasing. For multi-author works, list all authors in APA but use 'et al.' for 3+ in MLA in-text. For older sources, find the original publication date even if you accessed a digital version. Build a habit of capturing source details as you read, not at the end.

Frequently asked questions

Which citation style should I use?

Whichever your field or instructor specifies. Check the syllabus or journal author guidelines.

Are there other styles like IEEE or Vancouver?

Many — this tool covers the four most common humanities/social science styles. For technical writing, IEEE is standard. For medicine, Vancouver.

Does it handle DOIs?

Add the DOI as the URL field for APA/Chicago — they support DOI references natively.

Related tools

Explore more writing utilities on the tool hub — or jump straight to the Online Notepad, Online Text Editor, Word Combiner.