Citation Generator
Generate a properly formatted APA, MLA, or Chicago style bibliographic citation for a website, book, or article from author, title, publisher, year, URL and access date.
Input
Used only for Chicago-style citations.
Output
Guides
Building a bibliography means getting punctuation exactly right — a misplaced comma is technically "wrong" by academic convention, even when every fact is correct. This tool turns the plain details of a source — author, title, publisher or site name, year, URL, and access date — into a ready-to-paste citation in APA, MLA, or Chicago style, so you don't have to memorize each style guide's rules.
The three styles
APA (7th edition), standard in the social sciences, education, and business, emphasizes the publication year, placed in parentheses right after the author: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. Publisher/Site Name. URL. Author names are abbreviated to a last name and first initial.
MLA (9th edition), common in the humanities, leads with the author's full name and puts the title in quotation marks: Author Last, First. "Title of Work." Site Name, Year, URL. MLA favors spelled-out names over abbreviations.
Chicago (notes-bibliography style, used mainly in history) also quotes the title, but replaces the publication date with an access date: Author Last, First. "Title of Work." Site Name. Accessed Month Day, Year. URL. This is the one style here where the Access Date field matters — leave it blank for APA or MLA and it's ignored.
How to use it
- Pick a Citation Style — APA, MLA, or Chicago.
- Enter the Author's Last Name and First Name (both optional — leave blank for sources without a listed author).
- Enter the Title of Work — the only required field.
- Enter the Publisher / Site Name, the Year Published, and the URL.
- For Chicago citations, also set the Access Date — the day you retrieved the source.
The citation updates automatically as you type and appears in the output box, ready to copy or download as a .txt file. Switch the style dropdown at any time to reformat the same source differently.
FAQ
What if I don't know the author? Leave both author fields blank. The citation starts with the title instead, standard practice for unattributed sources.
Does it handle books or journal articles, not just websites? Use the Publisher / Site Name field for a book's publisher or a journal's name — the shape (author, title, publisher, year, URL) fits most single-author sources. For DOIs, volume/issue numbers, or multi-author works, you may need to adjust the result by hand.
Why doesn't the APA citation end with a period after the URL? That's correct per APA convention — URLs aren't followed by a period, since a trailing dot could be mistaken for part of the link. MLA and Chicago do end with one.
Can I generate a full bibliography? Generate entries one at a time and paste each into your reference list, sorted alphabetically by author's last name (or by title, for unattributed sources).
Privacy
Everything runs in your browser — the source details you enter are never sent to a server or stored anywhere.