About this tool
This generator builds a citation following the standard APA 7th edition or MLA 9th edition pattern for websites, books, and journal articles — the three source types students cite most often. Everything runs locally in your browser.
How to use the Citation Generator
- Pick a citation style — APA or MLA — and a source type.
- Fill in the author, title, and source-specific fields as they appear.
- Copy the generated citation — it updates as you type.
APA vs. MLA at a glance
APA style places the publication date right after the author, reflecting its emphasis on recency — common in psychology, education, and the sciences. MLA style leads with the author and title and places the date later in the citation, reflecting its roots in literature and the humanities, where the specific edition or publication often matters more than how recent it is. Both styles cite the same underlying facts about a source; they just order and punctuate them differently.
Things to watch out for
This tool covers the standard pattern for a single-author source of each type — real citations often need adjustments for multiple authors, missing information (no listed author or date), or less common source types like a book chapter, a government report, or a social media post. Title capitalization is left to you rather than applied automatically, since APA uses sentence case for article and chapter titles but title case for book and journal names, and getting the exception rules right automatically is genuinely error-prone. Always proofread a generated citation against your assignment's specific style guide before submitting it — this is standard advice even from official citation tools, not a limitation unique to this one.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. This tool follows the standard APA 7th and MLA 9th edition patterns for the three most common source types, but citation rules have many edge cases (multiple authors, missing dates, unusual source types), and even official style guides recommend proofreading generated citations against the current handbook.
Correct title casing depends on which words are major words versus articles, prepositions, and conjunctions — a rule with enough exceptions that automatic capitalization often gets it wrong. Type the title exactly as you want it capitalized, following your style guide's title-case or sentence-case rules.
APA (American Psychological Association) style is common in the social sciences and emphasizes the publication date, placed right after the author. MLA (Modern Language Association) style is common in the humanities and emphasizes the author and title, with the date typically placed later in the citation.