About CitationWithSources

CitationWithSources generates citations in APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, both Chicago systems, and IEEE. You enter what you know about a source and get the reference-list entry alongside the matching in-text form, because the two are formatted differently and one is not much use without the other.

How the formats are sourced

The hard part of a citation generator is not the string building, it is being right. Every style has fussy specifics that are easy to get subtly wrong, and a tool that gets them wrong is worse than no tool at all, because it is wrong confidently and at scale.

So no formatting rule here was written from memory. Each one was transcribed from a published style authority, and the pages that use a rule cite the source, its edition, and the date it was retrieved. The site's regression suite goes one step further: it reproduces those sources' own published worked examples verbatim. If a change to the formatter ever stopped producing a real published citation exactly, the tests fail before it ships.

• Purdue OWL — APA reference list: articles in periodicals — APA 7th, retrieved 2026-09-19
• Purdue OWL — APA reference list: books — APA 7th, retrieved 2026-09-19
• Purdue OWL — APA in-text citations: author/authors — APA 7th, retrieved 2026-09-19
• Purdue OWL — MLA works cited: books — MLA 9th, retrieved 2026-09-19
• Purdue OWL — MLA works cited: periodicals — MLA 9th, retrieved 2026-09-19
• The Chicago Manual of Style — Notes and Bibliography sample citations — CMOS 18th, retrieved 2026-09-19
• The Chicago Manual of Style — Author-Date sample citations — CMOS 18th, retrieved 2026-09-19
• Purdue OWL — IEEE reference list — IEEE, retrieved 2026-09-19

Which styles are missing, and why

AMA, ACS, Harvard and Vancouver are not offered. Authoritative rule text for them could not be retrieved when this site was built, and the alternative — approximating a format from memory and presenting it as correct — is exactly the failure this site exists to avoid. They may be added later if the published rules can be sourced properly.

Check the output

A generator handles common source shapes well and awkward ones less well. Translated editions, corporate authors with series numbers, undated web material and reprints all have handling that no field-filling form fully captures. Treat what you get here as a well-formed draft, and check anything unusual against your style manual or your institution's own guidance — which, where they disagree with a general rule, wins.

Who's behind this

Elbert Ballo built and maintains CitationWithSources. The verbatim-reproduction test described above is the actual bar every style rule here has to clear, not marketing copy.

Contact

Found a citation this site formats incorrectly? That is the most useful thing you can report, especially with the style and the source details you entered. Reach us at hello@citationwithsources.com.