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Fill in the author, title and publication details to create an APA 7th or MLA 9th edition reference for a webpage, book or journal article. Italics, punctuation, author initials and DOI format are handled automatically, and you can copy it into Word with formatting.
Source details
One author per line as “Last, First”. For an organization, just type its name without a comma. Leave blank if there's no author.
APA: article, book and webpage titles use sentence case (capitalize only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns); journal names use title case. The tool won't change your capitalization.
MLA: all titles use title case. The tool won't change your capitalization.
Reference
Italics are kept only when you use “Copy with formatting” and paste into an editor such as Word or Google Docs; plain text has no italics. Reference lists usually also need a hanging indent.
Key differences between APA and MLA
- Authors: APA uses last name and initials (Fried, E. I.) and lists up to 20 authors, shortening from the 21st; MLA inverts only the first author's full name and uses et al. for three or more.
- Dates: APA puts the date in parentheses after the author and writes n.d. if there is none; MLA puts it later, as “26 Aug. 2020”, and omits it if missing.
- Titles: APA italicizes book and webpage titles and leaves article titles plain without quotes; MLA puts article and webpage titles in quotation marks and italicizes books, websites and journals.
- Journals: APA gives the volume (italic) and issue in parentheses, with an en dash page range 340–354; MLA writes vol. 10, no. 2 and pages as pp. 340-54.
- DOIs and URLs: both styles write DOIs as https://doi.org/…; APA adds no final period, while MLA adds one and drops https:// from ordinary URLs.
How to use it
- Enter the DOI as 10.xxxx/…, doi:10.xxxx/… or a full link — it's normalized to https://doi.org/ automatically.
- APA uses a retrieval date only for pages whose content changes over time and isn't archived (such as live data pages); ordinary webpages don't need one. MLA's access date is optional and recommended when there's no publication date.
- When the website name matches the organizational author, APA omits the website name; the same goes for a publisher that matches the author.
- Rules follow the official APA Style website and the MLA Style Center. Double-check against your instructor's or journal's requirements before submitting.
- What you enter is processed only in your browser and never uploaded.