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Academic & Research

Citation Formatter

Format citations perfectly in APA7, MLA9, Chicago, Harvard, or IEEE with in-text citations, reference lists, and footnotes.

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Citation Formatter transforms raw source details into perfectly formatted citations in any major academic style. Get in-text citations, reference list entries, footnotes, or all formats at once — with correct author formatting, italicization, punctuation, DOI handling, and special case rules for every source type from journal articles to websites.

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Students

APA reference for a journal article

Students assembling reference lists get correctly punctuated APA 7 entries plus matching in-text citations in one pass.

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Input

Source Details
Carol Dweck and Ellen Leggett, A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality, Psychological Review, 1988, volume 95, issue 2, pages 256-273, DOI 10.1037/0033-295X.95.2.256
Citation Style
APA7
Source Type
journal
Output Format
both

Output (excerpt)

Reference list:
Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95(2), 256-273. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.95.2.256

In-text:
(Dweck & Leggett, 1988)
Narrative: Dweck and Leggett (1988) argued...
Bloggers

MLA citation for a website

Bloggers and writers citing online sources get a clean MLA 9 Works Cited entry with correct container and date formatting.

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Input

Source Details
Article 'How the Internet Changed Reading Habits' by Maria Konnikova, published on The New Yorker website, July 16 2014, URL https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/internet-reading-habits
Citation Style
MLA9
Source Type
website
Output Format
reference-list

Output (excerpt)

Works Cited:
Konnikova, Maria. "How the Internet Changed Reading Habits." The New Yorker, 16 July 2014, www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/internet-reading-habits.
Developers

IEEE citation for a conference paper

Developers and engineers writing technical papers get IEEE-numbered citations matching journal and conference submission rules.

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Input

Source Details
Vaswani et al., Attention Is All You Need, presented at the 31st Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2017, Long Beach, CA, pages 5998-6008
Citation Style
IEEE
Source Type
conference
Output Format
in-text

Output (excerpt)

In-text citation: [1]

Reference entry:
[1] A. Vaswani et al., "Attention is all you need," in Proc. 31st Conf. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. (NeurIPS), Long Beach, CA, USA, 2017, pp. 5998-6008.

Your Citation Formatter results will appear here

Expect rigorous, citation-ready prose with counterarguments acknowledged.

How to Use Citation Formatter

  1. Paste the source details in any format — the AI will identify the components.
  2. Select the citation style required by your professor or target journal.
  3. Choose the source type or let the AI auto-detect it from the information provided.
  4. Select the output format you need: in-text, reference list, both, or footnote.
  5. Copy the formatted citation from the 'Copy-Ready Output' section.

Use Cases

1

Format individual citations while writing a research paper

2

Convert citations from one style to another for a different journal submission

3

Create footnotes for a Chicago-style history paper

4

Format unusual source types (government reports, datasets, social media posts)

Tips for Best Results

  • Always include DOI numbers — they are required in APA 7th and recommended in most other styles.
  • Use 'Auto-Detect' for source type unless you know the AI is getting it wrong.
  • Double-check author name formatting — this is the most common citation error.
  • For web sources, include the access date if the content might change over time.
  • Use this tool alongside your reference manager (Zotero, Mendeley) to verify formatting.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is this different from the Bibliography Generator?

The Citation Formatter focuses on individual citation formatting with in-text, reference list, and footnote options. The Bibliography Generator is designed for batch-formatting multiple sources into a complete reference list. Use this for precision on individual sources.

Can I format multiple citations at once?

This tool is optimized for one source at a time for maximum accuracy. For multiple sources, use the Bibliography Generator tool or run this tool multiple times.

Which citation style should I use?

Use the style your institution or journal requires. APA 7th is the most common in social sciences, MLA 9th in humanities, Chicago in history and some humanities, Harvard in UK/Australian institutions, and IEEE in engineering and computer science.

What if I'm missing some information about my source?

The AI will flag missing required fields and format what you have. It also provides guidance on where to find the missing information. Most styles have rules for handling missing authors, dates, or publishers.

Are the formatted citations 100% accurate?

The AI follows current style guide rules with high accuracy. However, always verify critical submissions (journal papers, dissertations) against the official style manual or your university's citation guide.

Part of these workflows

This tool is used in step-by-step guides that help you get more done

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We don't store your text. Processing happens in real-time and your input is discarded immediately after generating the result.

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Citation Formatter vs. Bibliography Generator See Comparison →

✍️ Prompt Library

Ready-to-use prompts — click "Use This" to auto-fill the tool

Write an abstract (250 words) for a research paper on [topic] covering background, methods, results, and conclusion.

Create a literature review outline for a paper on [topic] with 8 key themes to explore.

Generate 10 research questions for a study on [topic]. Include both quantitative and qualitative options.

Write a methodology section for a [research type] study on [topic].

Summarise this research paper in 5 bullet points: [paste abstract/text]

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⚡ Pro Prompts

Write a complete grant proposal narrative for a…...
Create a systematic review protocol for [topic] following…...
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