Generate formatted citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard styles from book, website, or journal details.
This tool takes the bibliographic details you type in, author, title, publisher, year, and for web pages the URL and access date, then arranges them into a single reference line following the element order, punctuation, and capitalization rules of the style you select. It does not search for or verify the source itself, so whatever you enter, including typos, carries straight into the result. The most common surprise is Harvard style: unlike APA, MLA, and Chicago, Harvard has no single official rulebook, so the version produced here follows one common convention rather than a universally fixed standard.
A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.
Input
Book - Author: Harper Lee; Title: To Kill a Mockingbird; Publisher: J.B. Lippincott & Co.; Year: 1960; Style: APA
Expected output
Lee, H. (1960). *To kill a mockingbird*. J.B. Lippincott & Co.
APA 7th edition book references invert the author's name to last name plus initials, place the publication year in parentheses, italicize the title in sentence case, capitalizing only the first word, the first word after a colon, and any proper nouns, and end with the publisher name; no city or state is required in APA 7th edition.
For each source type, book, website, or journal article, and each citation style, the tool applies a fixed template controlling element order, whether the author's name is inverted, whether the title is italicized or quoted, and how the date is placed. Switching the style dropdown re-runs the same entered fields through a different template instead of re-deriving them from the source.
You enter every field yourself, author, title, publisher, year, and for web and journal sources the URL, DOI, or access date; the tool does not fetch metadata from a URL, ISBN, or DOI. Any field you leave blank is simply omitted from the assembled citation rather than flagged as missing, so an incomplete entry can look like a finished, correct one.
No. It only formats the fields you type in; it does not search a catalog, database, or the web to fill in or verify the author, publisher, or date. You need the correct bibliographic details on hand before using it, ideally copied directly from the book's title page or the journal article itself.
Not guaranteed. It follows the general rules of APA, MLA, Chicago, or Harvard style, but each guide has edition-specific details and Harvard varies by institution. Treat the result as a strong draft and check it against your assignment's specific style guide or your instructor's requirements before submitting.
The example and behavioral notes were checked against the browser implementation. Standards and primary references below define the relevant format, formula, or platform behavior.
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