Citation generator
Fill in what you have and the citation builds itself in both styles.
Two copy buttons: plain text for anywhere, and one that keeps the italics for a word processor.
One per line. Either order works: Ahmed, Sara or Sara Ahmed.
The journal, website or publisher it appeared in. Leave it empty for a standalone work.
MLA asks for this. APA wants it only when the page is likely to change.
APA 7
(n.d.).
The second one keeps the italics when you paste into a word processor. Where a browser does not allow that, it falls back to plain text rather than doing nothing.
This formats what you type. It does not look anything up, resolve a DOI or check that the source exists, so the spelling and the details are yours to get right. Both styles have rules for cases this form has no field for, a chapter in an edited book among them, and your department may have its own house variations.
Questions
- Is anything I type sent anywhere?
- No. Every tool here runs in the page itself. There is no server that receives your grades, your essay or your sources, and you can check it in your browser's network tab: using a tool produces no request carrying what you typed.
- Does it look up my source?
- No, and that is deliberate. It formats what you type. It does not resolve a DOI, fetch a page or check that the source exists, so the spelling and the details are yours to get right. A tool that looked things up would need to send your source list to a server, and this one does not have one.
- Why are there two copy buttons?
- Because italics are part of being correct, and plain text cannot carry them. The second button puts real formatting on the clipboard, so pasting into a word processor keeps the journal title italic. Copying asterisks around it would be a markdown convention rather than a citation style.
- Which parts are italic?
- The larger work. An article inside a journal is upright and the journal is italic; a standalone book or report is italic itself. Both styles agree on that, and the tool switches based on whether you filled in a source.
- What about a chapter in an edited book, or a film?
- This form has fields for an author, a title, a source, a year, a URL and a date, which covers articles, web pages and books. Both styles have rules for cases those fields cannot express, and your department may have house variations on top. For those, check your style guide rather than assuming this covers it.