Softonic

Bibliography Generator

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Every citation style has its own punctuation, capitalisation and author-date order rules, and missing a comma or putting the year in the wrong place is the sort of thing that loses marks. This generator takes the details of a source, author, year and title, plus the journal or website name, publisher and URL when the style needs them, and arranges them into a reference-list entry for the style you pick: APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17 or Harvard.

How to generate a reference entry

  1. 1

    Pick a citation style

    APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17 or Harvard, whichever your course or publication requires.

  2. 2

    Fill in the source details

    Author, year and title are the core fields. Add the journal or website name, publisher and URL when you have them.

  3. 3

    Generate the entry

    The tool orders the fields according to the style and applies its punctuation, including abbreviations such as "Available at:" for Harvard.

  4. 4

    Copy and finish in your document

    The output is plain text. Apply the style's italics (book and journal titles) and any extra fields such as volume, issue, pages or DOI by hand.

How each style formats the entry

The same book by Jane Smith, A Short History of Time, published by Penguin in 2019, comes out like this in each style (fields as typed):

APA 7:

Smith, Jane. (2019). A Short History of Time. Penguin.

MLA 9:

Smith, Jane. “A Short History of Time.” Penguin, 2019.

Chicago 17:

Smith, Jane. “A Short History of Time.” Penguin, 2019.

Harvard:

Smith, Jane (2019) A Short History of Time. Penguin.

The punctuation and the order of title and year differ per style. With a journal name or website name in the container field, or a URL, the output grows accordingly; Harvard adds “Available at:” before a URL.

Fields the tool uses

  • Author, Year, Title, required
  • Journal or website name, Publisher, URL, optional

What the tool does not do

  • In-text citations or footnotes, Only full reference-list entries are produced.
  • Source-type logic, There is no selector for book, article, film or interview, and no DOI, volume, issue, page or access-date fields. Add those by hand where the style asks for them.
  • Automatic italics, The entry is plain text; apply italics to book and journal titles in your word processor.

A note on styles

The four styles are the common academic defaults. If your course uses a specific edition, APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17 or the Harvard variant of your department, follow the edition it names: small rules such as publisher location in Chicago or initialised first names in APA change between versions.

Frequently Asked Questions

APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17 and Harvard. Pick the one your course or publication requires, and check the exact edition, because rules such as publisher location in Chicago differ between versions.

The tool formats only the fields you provide: author, year, title, and optionally container, publisher and URL. Volume, issue, pages, DOI and access dates are not generated automatically, so add them by hand where the style requires them.

Yes. The output is plain text. Styles require italics for book titles and journal names, so apply them in your word processor before submitting.

Yes, the fields pass through unchanged, including diacritics and non-Latin scripts. Keep the original-language title and add a translated title in square brackets where APA or Chicago ask for it.

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