How to cite your sources

A citation does two jobs. It gives credit to the person whose work you used, and it lets your reader find that source themselves. Every citation style asks for roughly the same facts: who made it, what it is called, where it came from, and when it appeared. The styles only disagree about the order and the punctuation.

That is why a missing detail matters more than a misplaced comma. Track down the author and the date first. If your teacher marks the format, the rules below cover the cases that come up most in school work.

Which style should you use?

Ask your teacher first, because the assignment decides this and not you. If nobody said, the subject is a reliable guide.

• MLA is standard in English and the humanities. It puts the author and a page number in the text and calls the final list Works Cited.
• APA is standard in psychology, education and the sciences. It puts the author and the year in the text and calls the final list References.
• Chicago is common in history. It usually puts the source in a numbered footnote and calls the final list Bibliography.

How to cite a website

Websites are the most common source and the most often cited badly. You need the author, the page title, the name of the site, the date it was posted, and the address. When no person is named, the organisation that runs the site becomes the author.

Copy the address of the exact page you read, not the home page. MLA 9 drops the https:// prefix. APA 7 keeps the full link and needs no accessed date unless the page is likely to change.

How to cite a book, novel or textbook

All three are the same source type, so the format does not change. You need the author, the title, the publisher and the year. Look at the copyright page near the front rather than the cover, because the cover often leaves the year off.

Chicago also wants the city the publisher is based in. If the title page names two cities, use the first one.

For a chapter in an edited collection, cite the chapter author and the chapter title first, then the book title and the editor.

How to cite a journal article

Journal articles need the volume, the issue and the page range on top of the usual facts. All three sit on the article’s first page or in the database record. If a DOI is listed, include it, because it is a permanent link and a bare database address is not.

How to cite a YouTube video or a documentary

For a video, the channel that posted it acts as the author. Use the title exactly as it appears under the video, and the upload date shown on the page.

A documentary is cited by its title, because no single person wrote it. Name the director after the title.

Two authors, three authors, and et al.

This is where most marks are lost, because each style shortens long author lists at a different point. Only the first author is ever reversed to surname-first. The rest keep their normal order.

• MLA: two authors are both named. With three or more, name the first and add et al.
• APA: up to twenty authors are all named, with an ampersand before the last one. In the text, three or more become et al. from the first mention.
• Chicago: up to three authors are all named. With more, this tool names the first and adds et al.

One detail graders do notice: et al. always takes a full stop, because it shortens the Latin et alia. Writing et al without it is a common slip.

What if there is no author or no date?

Neither one stops you citing the source. You move the next available detail into the empty slot.

• No author: start the entry with the title. In the text, MLA uses a shortened title in quotation marks, so ("Water Cycle" 12).
• No date: APA writes n.d. where the year would sit, both in the entry and in the text, so (CrashCourse, n.d.).
• No page numbers, as on most web pages: MLA gives the author alone, so (Reyes). APA gives a paragraph number for a direct quote, so (Reyes, 2023, para. 4).

In-text citations

The entry you build above belongs in the list at the end of your paper. Every time you borrow an idea in the body, you also need a short pointer to that entry. Leaving these out is treated as plagiarism even when your final list is perfect.

Put the citation immediately after the borrowed material and before the full stop that ends your sentence.

APA needs a page number only when you quote word for word. MLA wants one whenever the source has pages, quoted or not.

MLA format: the first-page heading

MLA papers have no title page. Instead the first page opens with a four-line heading in the upper left corner, double spaced like the rest of the paper: your name, your teacher’s name, the course, and the date written as 11 August 2026.

The title comes next, centred, in the same size and font as the body text. No bold, no underline, no quotation marks. A running head sits in the top right of every page: your surname, a space, then the page number.

• A readable 12 point font, most often Times New Roman.
• Double spacing everywhere, including the Works Cited list.
• One inch margins on all four sides.
• A half inch first-line indent on every paragraph.
• Works Cited starts on its own page, alphabetical by surname, with a half inch hanging indent.

APA format: the student title page

APA 7 papers do open with a title page, and the student version differs from the professional one. Centre these on separate lines, starting three or four lines down: the title in bold, then your name, your school, the course number and name, your instructor, and the due date.

The page number goes in the top right of every page, starting at 1 on the title page. Student papers need no running head.

• 12 point Times New Roman, 11 point Calibri or 11 point Arial.
• Double spacing everywhere, including the References list.
• One inch margins on all four sides.
• References starts on its own page, alphabetical by surname, with a half inch hanging indent.

Check the output before you hand it in

This tool builds the entry from what you type, so it cannot know that a title needs different capitals or that an author has a suffix. Two things are worth a second look.

First, capitals. MLA and Chicago use title case, where the important words are capitalised. APA uses sentence case for book and article titles, where only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised. Type the title the way your style wants it.

Second, the hanging indent. Every style wants the second and later lines of each entry pushed in by half an inch. That is a paragraph setting in your word processor, so it cannot travel with copied text.

Other tools for writing essays

• Essay word counter — check you are inside the word limit
• Reading and speaking time — how long your essay takes to read aloud
• Timer and stopwatch — work in timed blocks