Citation Generator

Citation Generator composes reference entries in three styles, APA, MLA, and Chicago, from a handful of fields you fill in. Start by choosing a Source type from the dropdown: Book, Website, Journal article, or Newspaper article, and the form reshapes itself, showing Publisher and City for books, URL and Site name for websites, URL and publication name for articles, and Volume, Issue, and Pages for journal papers. Author(s) accepts First Last or Last, First formats and separates multiple names with a semicolon or a newline. Pick APA, MLA, or Chicago from the style tabs and the citation is rebuilt instantly in the ResultBox, with a cleanup pass that trims duplicated punctuation and stray spacing. The output deliberately uses asterisks to mark italicized titles and quotes for article titles, so the same citation can be copied into editors that understand those conventions. Missing fields are skipped gracefully instead of producing broken text. A badge pair shows the active style and source type, and the entry downloads as citation-type-style.txt, such as citation-book-apa.txt.

1. 1

   Pick Book, Website, Journal article, or Newspaper article from the Source type dropdown.

2. 2

   Fill the form fields that appear, separating multiple authors with a semicolon or a newline.

3. 3

   Use the style tabs to switch the citation between APA, MLA, and Chicago.

4. 4

   Read the live citation in the result box and copy it when the format looks right.

5. 5

   Download the entry as citation-type-style.txt, such as citation-book-apa.txt, for your bibliography file.

• Assembling the references section of a research paper or thesis appendix.
• Starting a working bibliography in APA before switching to the final required style.
• Formatting website sources with access dates for an academic blog post.
• Building the bibliography for a textbook that mixes books, journals, and news articles.
• Compiling MLA citations for a literature class assignment in minutes.
• Exporting consistent citation files with predictable names for a shared document.

• Fill every field relevant to the source so references contain full publication metadata.
• Separate authors with semicolons every time to avoid misreading a single multi-name entry.
• Keep the source type consistent with the fields, and never pair a book with a random URL.
• Enter access dates explicitly, since some styles require them and missing data silently skips that part.
• After copying, verify the asterisk and quote conventions render correctly in your target editor.
• Back up the values you entered, because the tool builds citations from the fields you provide.

• Switch between APA, MLA, and Chicago after filling fields once to compare every style without retyping.
• Enter authors as Last, First when pasting from journal footnotes to keep APA formatting clean.
• Always fill the site name for website citations so the entry carries attribution beyond the bare URL.
• Sanity-check punctuation after editing fields, since missing data reshapes periods, commas, and placement.