- Which citation styles does the generator support?
- APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, and Chicago 17th edition (Notes-Bibliography). These three cover the vast majority of college essays, theses, and journal submissions in the English-speaking academic world. Other styles (Harvard, IEEE, Turabian, Vancouver) aren't supported yet — check Purdue OWL for those.
- Which source types are supported?
- Four: books, journal articles, websites, and news articles. These cover roughly 80% of student citation needs. For edited volumes, book chapters, conference proceedings, government documents, dissertations, films, podcasts, or social-media posts, you'll need to format manually using the official manual — start with the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL).
- How should I enter multiple authors?
- Separate authors with a semicolon or the word 'and'. Each author can be written as 'Last, First' (most common in citation form) or 'First Last' — the tool detects both. For a single-token name with no comma (like 'World Health Organization'), the tool treats it as an organizational author and formats it without inverting the name.
- Why does APA show the year as 'n.d.' if I leave it blank?
- 'n.d.' stands for 'no date' — it's the APA convention for sources with no publication year. MLA and Chicago handle missing years differently (often just omitting them); the tool follows each style's rule. If you have the year, fill it in.
- How does the DOI field work?
- Paste either a bare DOI (like 10.1038/nature12373) or a full URL. Bare DOIs are converted to the recommended https://doi.org/... format that APA 7, MLA 9, and Chicago 17 all prefer. If you only have a URL with no DOI, leave the field blank or paste the URL — it'll be carried through.
- Does this tool handle in-text citations and footnotes?
- It produces the in-text parenthetical citation (the short form you put in the body of your paper). APA uses (Author, Year), MLA uses (Author Page#), Chicago Notes-Bibliography traditionally uses footnotes, but the short author-date parenthetical is widely accepted in student work and that's what we emit. For full footnote/endnote formatting, use the Chicago Manual of Style itself.
- Why don't the dates in the output match what I typed?
- The tool reformats dates to match each style's convention. APA writes '(2020, March 15)'; MLA writes '15 Mar. 2020'; Chicago writes 'March 15, 2020'. Type the date in YYYY-MM-DD form for the cleanest output, or year-only if that's all you have.
- Are these citations 100% correct?
- They're correct for the common case of each source type. Citation styles have hundreds of edge cases that the official manuals address in detail: corporate authors with subdivisions, translated works, reprints, multiple editions of the same book, secondary sources, two works by the same author in the same year, and so on. Always proofread against the official style guide (APA Publication Manual 7th ed., MLA Handbook 9th ed., Chicago Manual of Style 17th ed.) or Purdue OWL before submitting graded work.
- Where do I learn the rules these citations follow?
- The best free reference is Purdue OWL (owl.purdue.edu) — it covers APA, MLA, and Chicago with examples for every source type. Your university library probably also has a citation guide. The style manuals themselves (APA's Publication Manual, MLA Handbook, Chicago Manual of Style) are the canonical sources and are worth buying or borrowing if you write academic papers regularly.
- Does the tool save my citations or sources?
- No. The tool runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Nothing is sent to a server, logged, or stored. Once you close the tab, your input is gone — copy each citation as you generate it.
