Loona Citation Generator - APA, MLA & Chicago
Citation styles are fussy: APA wants sentence case and initials, MLA wants title case and page numbers, Chicago wants the year right after the author. One wrong comma can cost marks. Enter the source details once below, pick your style, and copy the finished entry - italics included.
Your citation
How to use the Citation Generator
- Pick your citation style (APA, MLA or Chicago author-date) and the source type (website, book or journal article).
- Add the author or authors - last name and first name in separate boxes - then fill in as many details as you have. Leave unknown fields empty; the entry is built gracefully without them.
- Check the formatted citation, then copy it with real italics into your document, or copy the plain-text version.
- Use the in-text citation in your paragraph where you refer to the source.
How it works
The generator applies the official formatting rules of each style to your details. APA (7th) inverts authors to surname plus initials, dates the entry right after the author, uses sentence case for titles and prints DOIs as https://doi.org links. MLA (9th) builds a container chain - author, title of source, title of container, volume, number, date, pages - and shortens three or more authors to et al. Chicago (17th, author-date) puts the year immediately after the author and includes the place of publication for books. Where a style's rule depends on the number of authors - like APA's 20-author limit or Chicago's 10-author limit - the generator follows the same threshold the style manuals set.
Worked example
You enter a book: author John Andrew Smith, year 2020, title The Art of Testing Code, publisher Penguin Books. APA gives you: Smith, J. A. (2020). The art of testing code. Penguin Books. Switch to MLA and the same details become: Smith, John Andrew. The Art of Testing Code. Penguin Books, 2020. In Chicago author-date: Smith, John Andrew. 2020. The Art of Testing Code. Penguin Books. Three styles, one set of details - no retyping.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which citation styles and sources are supported?
APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition and Chicago 17th edition (author-date system), for three source types: websites, books and journal articles. For each source you get the full reference-list / works-cited / bibliography entry plus the matching in-text citation. Chicago notes-and-bibliography style (footnotes) is not covered.
Are the citations guaranteed to be correct?
The generator follows the official rules of each style for these common source types, including author-name inversion, italics, sentence case versus title case, DOI formatting and et al. thresholds. Styles have many special cases, though, so always compare the result with your school, university or publisher's guide before submitting.
How does et al. work in each style?
APA lists up to 20 authors in the reference list (21 or more: first 19, an ellipsis, then the last author) and uses et al. in text from three authors up. MLA shortens three or more authors to the first author plus et al. in both the works-cited entry and in text. Chicago lists up to 10 authors in the bibliography (11 or more: first 7 plus et al.) and uses et al. in text from four authors up.
Why did a capital letter change in my title?
APA uses sentence case for article and book titles - only the first word, the first word of a subtitle and proper nouns are capitalised - while MLA and Chicago use title case. The generator applies each style's rule automatically and preserves words it detects as proper nouns or acronyms (such as NASA or AI), but check names of people, places and organisations in the result and fix any capitalisation by editing your title input.
Is my data stored or sent anywhere?
No. The citation is built entirely in your browser with JavaScript. Nothing you type is uploaded, stored or tracked - close the tab and it is gone.
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