Citation Generator
Enter the author, title, and source details for a book, article, or webpage, and this tool builds a properly formatted APA, MLA, or Harvard citation instantly. Always compare the result against your institution’s exact style guide before submitting.
Generated Citation (APA)
Fill in the fields above to generate your citation.
Copied to clipboard!
Double-check the edge cases
Style guides handle multiple authors, missing authors, and undated sources differently. Confirm unusual sources against your official style manual.
Formatting author names
For APA and Harvard, enter names as “Surname, F.” For MLA, “Surname, First Name” reads most naturally.
Auditing a full reference list?
Run it through our Citation & Reference Cross-Checker to catch citations with no matching entry.
Need citation consistency across a whole paper?
Pen Scholar's editors check every in-text citation against your reference list as part of the editing process.