Citation Generator

The three styles order the same information differently and suit different fields. APA, common in psychology and the sciences, leads with the publication year in parentheses and uses sentence case for titles: Smith, J. (2020). MLA, used in the humanities and literature, spells out the author's first name and places the year at the end. Chicago, favored in history, adds the place of publication before the publisher. Author handling differs too: APA inverts every author to "Last, F.", MLA inverts only the first author and adds "et al." for three or more, while Chicago inverts just the first author and keeps the rest in normal order. Rather than memorize each ruleset, enter your source once and this generator returns all three formatted versions side by side so you can copy whichever your instructor requires.

Both YouTube videos and podcasts are treated as their own source types because they need fields a book never has. For a YouTube video you supply the channel name, video title, upload date, year, and URL; APA labels it "[Video]" and attributes it to the channel, while MLA italicizes "YouTube" as the container. For a podcast you enter the host, episode title, episode number, podcast name, year, and URL, and the styles format it as a podcast episode within the show. Getting these audiovisual sources right by hand is error-prone because the punctuation and bracketed labels vary by style. Select the YouTube or podcast source type in this tool, fill in the fields, and it produces correct APA, MLA, and Chicago references in one click.

Enter every author in the single author field and separate each name with a semicolon, for example "John Smith; Jane Doe; Maria Garcia". The generator then reformats those names according to each style's rules automatically, so you never reorder them by hand. APA inverts all authors to last name plus initials and joins them with an ampersand. MLA inverts only the first author and, once there are three or more contributors, shortens the list to the first author followed by "et al.". Chicago inverts the first author but writes every remaining author in normal first-name-last-name order, joined with "and". Type the full first and last name for each person so the tool can split them correctly, then generate to see the same author list rendered three different ways.

A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a permanent link to a published article that never breaks, even if the journal moves the page, which is why APA prefers it over a plain URL. When you choose the journal article source type, the form gives you a dedicated DOI field alongside the author, article title, journal name, volume, issue, and page range. Enter just the identifier itself, such as 10.1000/xyz123, and the generator appends it as a proper https://doi.org/ link in the APA reference. The DOI is optional, so leave it blank if the article does not have one. If you have it, including it makes your reference more stable and verifiable. Fill in the journal fields above and generate to format the citation across all three styles instantly.

Always cite the year the source was published, not the date you happened to read it. The publication year tells your reader which version of the work you used, and style guides expect it in the year field for books, articles, and videos. The date you viewed a page is separate and only matters for websites, because online content can change or disappear over time. That is why the website source type has its own access-date field in addition to the year. Match the published year exactly as it appears on the title page or article, and for websites record the date you actually opened the page. Enter both where the form asks, generate your citation, and review it against your assigned style guide before adding it to your reference list.