How to use the citation generator
- 1
Choose a style and a source type
The form changes with the source: book, book chapter, journal article, web page, report or thesis. - 2
Fill in the form or look up a DOI
Add each author, or an organisation as the author. If the source has a DOI, paste it and press Look up DOI to fill the form, then check every field. - 3
Copy the citation
Copy the reference entry and the in-text citation. Italics come with them when you paste into Word or Google Docs. - 4
Build your list
Add each source to your list, then copy the whole list. It is sorted the way the style requires, and it updates if you change style.
What changes between the styles
The same source looks different in each style, and long author lists are where the styles differ most:
- APA 7: up to 20 authors in the reference, then the first 19, an ellipsis and the last. In the text, et al. from three authors.
- MLA 9: one or two authors in the entry, otherwise the first author and et al. In-text citations give the author and page, with no year.
- Chicago author-date: follows the 18th edition, so up to six authors, or the first three and et al. from seven. No place of publication for books.
- Harvard: Harvard referencing here follows Cite Them Right. Three names in the text, then et al. This tool names every author in the reference list. Some universities accept et al. from four, so check yours.
- Vancouver: sources are numbered in the order you cite them. Up to six authors, then et al.
Check the result before you hand it in
The tool never makes up a date or a publisher. A missing date prints the style’s no-date form, and a missing required field is flagged above the buttons.
Crossref’s data is often imperfect, especially capitalisation, so always compare a looked-up record with the source. The tool keeps capitals as you type them and does not change a title to sentence case or title case. It does not abbreviate journal names for Vancouver or publisher names for MLA either. For two works by the same author from the same year, add the a and b yourself. Your university’s own guide always comes first.
What stays private
What you type stays in this browser tab, and your list is gone when you close or reload the page, so copy it first. The one exception is the DOI lookup: when you press that button, the DOI goes to Crossref, an outside service.
Quoting an interview in your thesis? Spirelight’s interview transcription makes a text draft from an uploaded recording, which you check against the audio yourself.