What this does
You paste in the author, the title, a year, and a few other bits. Out comes a properly formatted reference in four styles at once: APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago, and Harvard. Pick the one your professor or journal wants and copy it. That’s the whole loop.
The form is smart about source type. Citing a website needs a URL and the date you read it. A book wants a publisher and city. A journal article needs a volume, issue, and page range. Flip the source selector at the top and the fields rearrange so you’re never staring at boxes that don’t apply.
The four styles, quickly
Each style has its own quirks, and the generator handles them so you don’t have to memorize the rules:
- APA puts the year right after the author in parentheses and uses sentence case for titles. Author names collapse to initials, like “Smith, J. M.”
- MLA spells out the first author’s full name, wraps article titles in quotes, and ends a web citation with the access date.
- Chicago looks a lot like MLA at a glance but punctuates journals differently and lists the city before the publisher for books.
- Harvard keeps initials tight (“Smith, J.M.”) and tags web sources with “Available at” plus an access date.
Multiple authors? Separate them with commas or the word “and”. The tool figures out the joining punctuation per style, so APA gets its ampersand and MLA gets “et al” once you go past two names.
How to use it
Open it, hit Sample, and look at what fills in. That’s the fastest way to see the field layout for each source type. Then clear it and drop in your own details.
Type each author as “First Last”, like “Jane Doe”. The generator splits the name and reorders it correctly, turning that into “Doe, J.” for APA or “Doe, Jane” for MLA. You don’t reformat anything by hand.
Watch the right side update live as you type. There’s a style selector for the big preview, and below it a stacked view showing all four at once with a Copy button on each. Need a plain text file of everything? Hit Download all and you get a single .txt with each style labeled.
Good to know
Nothing you type leaves your browser. There’s no upload, no account, no server round trip. The formatting runs in plain JavaScript on your machine, so you can use it offline once the page has loaded.
A small honesty note: this covers the common case well, but citation styles have hundreds of edge rules for things like edited volumes, translators, DOIs, and corporate authors. For a standard website, book, or journal article you’re set. For a 14-author dataset with a DOI and a secondary editor, double-check against your style manual before you submit.
Leave the year blank and APA and Harvard will write “n.d.” for you, which is the correct shorthand for “no date”. Small touch, but it’s the kind of thing graders notice.
Common questions
Which citation styles are supported?
APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, Chicago, and Harvard. You see all four generated at the same time from one form, so there’s no switching back and forth.
Do I need to format author names a certain way?
Just write them naturally as “First Last” and separate multiple authors with commas or “and”. The tool flips them into “Last, First” and adds the right punctuation for each style.
Does it handle in-text citations too?
Not yet. This builds the full reference-list entry, the one that goes in your bibliography or works-cited page. In-text parenthetical citations aren’t generated here.
Is my data sent anywhere?
Nope. Every citation is built locally in your browser. Close the tab and it’s gone.
Why does my journal citation look different from a book?
Because they follow different rules. Journals carry a volume, issue, and page range; books carry a publisher and city. The form swaps fields based on the source type you picked, and each style formats those pieces its own way.
Can I copy just one style?
Yep. Each of the four entries has its own Copy button, and the large preview copies whichever style you’ve selected. Use Download all if you’d rather grab the full set as a text file.