Citation Formats

Learn about the different citation styles we support and when to use them.

APA 7th Edition

American Psychological Association

When to Use

APA style is commonly used in psychology, education, social sciences, and business. It emphasizes the date of publication and uses author-date citations.

Key Features

  • Author's last name and initials
  • Publication year in parentheses
  • Italicized titles for books and websites
  • Sentence case for titles (only first word capitalized)
  • Ampersand (&) before final author

Examples

Book

Smith, J. A., & Brown, M. K. (2020). Understanding Modern Psychology. Academic Press.

Journal Article

Johnson, R. L. (2021). Cognitive processes in learning. Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1234/example

Website

National Institute of Health. (2022). Mental health resources. https://www.nih.gov/mental-health

MLA 9th Edition

Modern Language Association

When to Use

MLA style is primarily used in humanities, especially for literature, languages, and cultural studies. It focuses on authorship and page numbers for in-text citations.

Key Features

  • Author's last name, first name
  • Title in quotation marks for articles, italics for books
  • Title case for all titles
  • Access date for web sources
  • "et al." for three or more authors

Examples

Book

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner, 1925.

Journal Article

Anderson, Chris. "The Long Tail." Wired Magazine, 2004, https://www.wired.com/long-tail. Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.

Website

"Climate Change Facts." NASA, 2023, https://climate.nasa.gov/facts. Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.

Chicago Style

Chicago Manual of Style

When to Use

Chicago style is widely used in history, arts, and some social sciences. It offers two systems: notes-bibliography (humanities) and author-date (sciences). We provide the notes-bibliography format.

Key Features

  • Flexible format with footnotes or endnotes
  • Full publication details in bibliography
  • Title case for most titles
  • Comprehensive publication information
  • Different formats for first and subsequent citations

Examples

Book

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. University of Chicago Press, 2018.

Journal Article

Gardner, Howard. "Multiple Intelligences Theory." Educational Researcher, 1995. https://doi.org/10.1234/example.

Website

"Digital Resources." Library of Congress. Accessed January 15, 2024. https://www.loc.gov/digital.

Harvard Style

Author-Date Referencing

When to Use

Harvard style is common in sciences, social sciences, and business across UK and Australian universities. It uses author-date citations similar to APA but with different formatting.

Key Features

  • Author surname followed by year in parentheses
  • Italicized titles for books and journals
  • "Available at:" for URLs
  • Access date in parentheses
  • Ampersand (&) for multiple authors

Examples

Book

Dawkins, R. (2006) The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press.

Journal Article

Watson, J. D. & Crick, F. H. (1953) Molecular structure of nucleic acids. Nature. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/example (Accessed: 15 January 2024).

Website

World Health Organization (2023) Global Health Statistics. Available at: https://www.who.int/statistics (Accessed: 15 January 2024).

Quick Comparison

Feature APA 7 MLA 9 Chicago Harvard
Common Fields Social Sciences Humanities History, Arts Sciences, Business
Author Format Last, F. M. Last, First Last, First Last, F. M.
Date Position After author After publisher After publisher After author
Title Case Sentence case Title case Title case Sentence case
Access Date Not always Required Required Required
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