How the four styles differ
All four styles give the same facts: who wrote the work, when, its title and where to find it. They differ in order and punctuation.
- APA 7: author initials, the year in brackets after the authors, article titles in plain text and book and web page titles in italics, the journal volume in italics.
- MLA 9: full first names, the date near the end, article and web page titles in quotation marks, the container (journal or website) in italics, and "Works Cited" as the list heading.
- Cite Them Right Harvard: initials, the year in brackets with no full stop, article titles in single quotation marks, and "Available at:" with an access date for online sources.
- Chicago author-date: full first names, the year after the authors, article titles in double quotation marks, and shortened page ranges such as 471–85.
Authors and et al.
Each style shortens long author lists differently, and the generator applies the rule for you. APA lists up to 20 authors in the reference; with 21 or more it gives the first 19, an ellipsis and the last author, and in the text it uses et al. from three authors. MLA gives the first author and et al. from three authors. Chicago lists up to six authors and, with more than six, the first three and et al.; in the text it uses et al. from three. Cite Them Right Harvard lists every author up to ten in the reference list and names up to three in the text. A ministry, company or other group goes in as an organisation author.
Titles, DOIs and web addresses
The tool prints titles exactly as you type them, because it cannot tell a proper noun from an ordinary word. APA and the Cite Them Right examples use sentence case, while MLA and Chicago use title case; the hint under the title box reminds you. A DOI is written as a https://doi.org/ link in every style. MLA drops "https://" from ordinary web addresses. APA adds a retrieval date only for an undated page that changes over time, Chicago gives an access date when a page has no date, and Harvard gives one for online sources.
Where the rules come from
The formats follow the examples published by each style’s owner, checked on 18 October 2026. Harvard has no single owner, so we followed the Cite Them Right version as summarised by a university library; your university may use its own variant, so check its guide if it differs. Edited books, chapters, newspapers and other source types are not covered yet.