Citation Generator for APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard
Format references in APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard styles.
Reference
Your formatted reference appears here.
Use via API
Format a reference for a book, journal article, website, newspaper article or report in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago (notes-bibliography) or Harvard style. Send JSON, get JSON back.
POST https://pithlab.com/api/v1/tools/citation-generator
curl https://pithlab.com/api/v1/tools/citation-generator \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $PITHLAB_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"style":"apa","type":"journal","title":"Attention is all you need","authors":"Vaswani, Ashish; Shazeer, Noam","container":"Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems","volume":"30","pages":"5998-6008","year":"2017"}'About the Citation Generator
Create reference list entries for books, journal articles, web pages, news articles and reports in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17 and Harvard, with italics ready to paste.
How to use the Citation Generator
- Choose the type of source: book, journal article, web page, newspaper or magazine article, or report.
- Add each author's family name and given names. For an organization, type its name as the family name and leave given names empty.
- Fill in the title, dates and the other details you have. Leave unknown fields empty.
- Pick a citation style and check the preview, which shows italics as they will appear.
- Copy as rich text to keep the italics in Word or Google Docs, or copy as plain text.
Examples
Input
Book. Author: Lynne M. Jackson. Title: The psychology of prejudice: From attitudes to social action. Edition: 2. Publisher: American Psychological Association. Year: 2019. DOI: 10.1037/0000168-000
Output
Jackson, L. M. (2019). *The psychology of prejudice: From attitudes to social action* (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000168-000
Input
Journal article. Author: Melinda Baldwin. Title: In Referees We Trust? Journal: Physics Today. Volume 70, issue 2, February 2017, pages 44-49
Output
Baldwin, Melinda. “In Referees We Trust?” *Physics Today*, vol. 70, no. 2, Feb. 2017, pp. 44-49.
Input
Book. Authors: Brian Grazer, Charles Fishman. Title: A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. Place: New York. Publisher: Simon & Schuster. Year: 2015
Output
Grazer, Brian, and Charles Fishman. *A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life*. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.
Frequently asked questions
Are these citations guaranteed to be correct?
They follow the published rules of each style for common cases, but styles have many exceptions and your institution or publisher may use its own version, especially for Harvard. Always check the result against your institution's style guide before you submit.
Does it fix the capitalization of titles?
No. Titles are used exactly as you type them, because automatic changes get proper nouns wrong. APA uses sentence case (only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns capitalized), while MLA and Chicago use title case.
How are many authors handled?
APA 7 lists up to 20 authors, and for 21 or more gives the first 19, an ellipsis and the last author. MLA 9 lists two authors and uses et al. for three or more. Chicago 17 lists up to ten and uses the first seven plus et al. beyond that. Harvard here lists three and uses et al. for four or more.
What if there is no date or no author?
APA and Chicago write n.d. and Harvard writes (no date). MLA simply leaves the date out. With no author, the title moves to the start of the entry. The access date is optional in MLA, used in Chicago only when a web page has no date, ignored by APA, and added after the link in Harvard.
Why do italics disappear when I paste?
Plain text cannot hold italics. Use Copy as rich text, which puts formatted HTML on the clipboard so word processors keep the italics. If your browser does not support that, it falls back to plain text.