Citation Generator — 13 Styles Free Online

How the Citation Generator Works

This free citation generator formats your source details into 13 major citation styles used across academia, medicine, law, and scientific publishing. Enter your source type, fill in the relevant fields, and click generate. The tool handles author name inversion, italicization rules, punctuation conventions, and volume/issue formatting specific to each style. Whether you are writing a research paper, thesis, journal submission, or legal brief, accurate citations protect you from plagiarism and demonstrate scholarly rigor.

All 13 Citation Styles Explained

APA 7th Edition is the standard for psychology, education, and social sciences, using author-date in-text citations. MLA 9th Edition is used in humanities with author-page citations. Chicago 17th is favored in history, using footnotes with a bibliography. Harvard is widely used in UK and Australian universities. IEEE is the standard for engineering and computer science with numbered brackets. Vancouver is used in biomedical and health sciences with numbered citations.

NLM (National Library of Medicine) is required by PubMed-indexed journals and many biomedical publications — it follows the ICMJE Recommendations for medical manuscripts. ASM (American Society for Microbiology) is the standard for microbiology journals like the Journal of Bacteriology, mBio, and Applied and Environmental Microbiology. AMA 11th Edition is used by the Journal of the American Medical Association and most medical school assignments. AAA (American Anthropological Association) is required for anthropology journals like American Ethnologist and Cultural Anthropology. Turabian 9th Edition is the student-friendly version of Chicago style, widely assigned in history and religion courses. Bluebook 21st Edition is the legal citation standard used in law reviews, court filings, and legal memoranda across the United States. CSE 8th Edition is used in biology, ecology, and environmental science journals following Council of Science Editors guidelines.

Tips for Accurate Citations

Always include the DOI when available, as it provides a permanent link to the source. For websites, record the access date since web content can change. When citing books, include the edition if it is not the first. For journal articles, double-check volume, issue, and page numbers against the original publication. Use the exact title as it appears on the source, including subtitle after a colon. For multiple authors, list them in the order they appear on the work. For NLM and ASM style citations, author names use initials without periods. For Bluebook legal citations, pay attention to signal phrases and case formatting. This citation generator produces reference list entries for all 13 styles simultaneously — copy the one you need.

When to Use Each Citation Format

Check your assignment guidelines or target journal requirements before selecting a citation style. For social sciences use APA, for humanities use MLA or Chicago, for engineering use IEEE. Medical students and researchers should use NLM, AMA, or Vancouver depending on their target journal. Microbiology papers require ASM format. Law students need Bluebook for legal memoranda and court documents. Biology and ecology papers use CSE style. Anthropology assignments require AAA format. Consistency is critical: never mix citation styles within a single document. This free citation generator produces all 13 formats simultaneously, saving hours of manual reformatting when submitting to multiple journals.