Citation Generator (APA/MLA/Chicago)
100% PrivateEducation & Research ToolsFormat reference list entries and in-text citations in APA, MLA and Chicago styles.
Runs entirely in your browser. Your input is not uploaded to Ovatly or anywhere else.
Fill in the fields and the formatted citation appears here, ready to copy into your reference list.
- 1Choose the citation style and the source type (book, journal article or website).
- 2Add the authors, then fill in the title, year and the fields for that source type.
- 3Optionally add the page you are citing to get a pinpoint in-text citation or footnote.
- 4Copy the reference list entry, the in-text citation or the Chicago footnote into your document.
For Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1962, published in Boston), the generator produces: APA: Carson, R. (1962). Silent spring. Houghton Mifflin. MLA: Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin, 1962. The APA in-text citation is (Carson, 1962); citing page 45 it becomes (Carson, 1962, p. 45).
- APA titles use sentence case. The tool lowercases the title and capitalizes the first word and the word after a colon, but it cannot detect proper nouns inside a title, so check names like "Nature" or "Darwin" in your title yourself.
- The editions applied are APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago 17. If your institution asks for a different edition or a house style, its rules win.
- Chicago book entries use the place of publication; if you leave it out, the entry is built without it, which newer Chicago guidance accepts for many books.
- Always compare the result against your style guide for unusual sources (translated works, edited volumes, preprints); this tool covers books, journal articles and web pages.
Yes. Paste just the DOI (for example 10.1038/171737a0) and it is printed as a full https://doi.org/ link, which is the form APA, MLA and Chicago all prefer.
About this tool
The Citation Generator formats reference list entries and in-text citations in APA (7th edition), MLA (9th edition) and Chicago (17th edition, both author-date and notes-bibliography). Students and researchers use it to turn the details of a book, journal article or web page into correctly punctuated citations without memorizing three style manuals.
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