Format references in APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard styles.
Tip: use samples, upload, copy, download, and send-to actions inside the workspace where available.
Citation Generator is a free, browser-based tool that helps you make messy data readable. Format references in APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard styles. It's built for speed and privacy: Everything runs locally in your browser — your data is never uploaded to a server. No sign-up, no installs, and no daily limits.
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Open toolAuthor–date. Sentence-case titles, ampersand before the final author, up to 20 names listed.
A whole monograph or edited volume cited in full.
Doe, J. M. (2026). The art of tabular data (2nd ed.). DataXForge Press.
(Doe, 2026)
Add a page or paragraph in the “In-text page / locator” field above to include a locator.
Doe, J. M. (2026). The art of tabular data (2nd ed.). DataXForge Press.
Doe, Jane M. The Art of Tabular Data. 2nd ed., DataXForge Press, 2026.
Doe, Jane M. The Art of Tabular Data. 2nd ed., London: DataXForge Press, 2026.
Doe, Jane M. 2026. The Art of Tabular Data. 2nd ed., London: DataXForge Press.
Doe, J.M. (2026) The art of tabular data. 2nd ed. London: DataXForge Press.
J. M. Doe, The art of tabular data, 2nd ed., London: DataXForge Press, 2026.
Doe JM. The art of tabular data. 2nd ed. London: DataXForge Press; 2026.
Author–date styles alphabetise by the first author's surname, ignoring a leading “The”, “A” or “An”. Entries use a hanging indent in a finished document.
Name handling. APA reduces given names to initials and joins the last two authors with an ampersand; MLA spells the first author’s name in full and collapses to “et al.” from three authors; IEEE and Vancouver put initials before the surname.
Capitalisation. APA sentence-cases titles of articles and books — only the first word, proper nouns and the word after a colon are capitalised. MLA and Chicago title-case them. This is the difference most people notice when a generated citation looks wrong.
Where the year goes. Author–date styles put it immediately after the author because in-text markers need it; numbered styles push it to the end, since the in-text marker is only a number.
Accessed dates are required by MLA for web sources and by APA only when the content is expected to change. A DOI always beats a URL where one exists — it is the only identifier guaranteed to keep resolving.
