Enter each author as Last name, First name. Separate several authors with a semicolon. Leave empty for a source with no named author.
Enter at least a title or an author to generate a citation.
These citations are standard estimates built from the fields you enter. Titles are not italicised in the copied text, add italics yourself once pasted, and always check your institution's official style guide before submitting.
Harvard referencing, APA, and where UK courses actually diverge
Most UK universities ask undergraduates for a "Harvard style" reference list, an author-date format that sounds like a single fixed standard but is not: each library publishes its own house version, often built on the widely used Cite Them Right guide, and the exact punctuation differs from one institution to the next. Psychology and some social science departments instead require APA in its 7th edition, while law students write in OSCOLA, a footnote-based style unrelated to author-date referencing, and some English or history courses ask for MLA. A common mistake is treating a reference list built for one module as valid for another, when the house rules rarely match exactly. Zotero and EndNote are the two managers most UK university libraries provide free access to and cover in induction sessions.
The same book in three formats
| Style | Example |
|---|---|
| APA 7 | Smith, J. (2020). Learning to write. Penguin. |
| MLA 9 | Smith, John. Learning to Write. Penguin, 2020. |
| Chicago (author-date) | Smith, John. 2020. Learning to Write. Penguin. |
Where this generator falls short
This tool covers one author or a short author list, a single edition, and one source type at a time. It does not handle edited volumes, a chapter within an edited book, translated works, secondary sources quoted from another text, or a later edition of a work you cite. Page ranges and DOIs are not collected here either, and OSCOLA footnotes are not generated at all since that style has its own separate structure. Treat the output as a solid first draft, then check it against your department's referencing guide before submitting.
How each format is built
APA places the year in parentheses right after the author and italicises the title of a standalone work such as a book or web page, rather than an article title. MLA keeps each author's first name written out in full, moves the year to the end of the entry, and puts article and web page titles in quotation marks instead of italics. Chicago author-date reads close to APA but with the year sitting directly after the author, and article titles in quotation marks rather than italics. Pair this generator with the Study Planner to schedule the reading and writing time a reference list like this takes to put together.