Formatting your quotes can be rather tricky. Learning where to put all the commas, italics, and quotation marks in the right places requires a lot of time and almost inhuman patience. After you write an A+ paper, you may have no energy left for it. The text can now become just a big, blurred gray spot before your eyes. Then trying to fix quotes is not what you want to do.
Using citation tools is necessary. Here’s a rating of the top 25 best free online citation generators.
But let us start with an introduction to citation styles.
How do you cite a book?
Every university sets the citation style for its students to use. The most popular of them are MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, Turabian, Vancouver, and CSE. Each style has a detailed tutorial on formatting a paper—from punctuation to fonts.
A cited page should be formatted exactly according to the rules of your citation style. Otherwise, your teacher may return the paper without any grade.
To make a works cited page, you need to spend about an hour or so on changing fonts, inserting tabs, and rearranging information.
How to make a bibliography easily?
The first option is to learn using guides from professionals and follow all the steps. Yes. This is tedious activity and demands a lot of time. But it’s also absolutely free, and you can be sure about the quality of your annotated bibliography.
Purdue Owl contains guidelines on APA, MLA, and Chicago citation styles with templates for movies, websites, books with single or multiple authors, periodicals, quotes, and so on.
Here are some short tips to use when working with references:
- Maintain punctuation and capitalization of the source.
- Put the last name first even in in-text citations.
- Save links to every online source—you’ll need them later.
- Don’t use additional formatting like italicizing or underlining.
Reference generator software
Another way to cite sources is to use a referencing tool. Usually, they don’t focus on citations only and offer various services like book rental, custom writing, and digital library building.
For example, Easylib is a reference builder that concentrates mostly on library creation.
By paying for similar services, you save a lot of time when working with sources. The variety of software is wide. And citing websites, books, and periodicals becomes even faster.
But the best part:
You’ll never have to question “How to quote?” again.
But there’s also a third way. And we think it is the best option.
Free online citation generators
Not ready to spend money on a citation creator?
Instead of asking how to cite sources over and over again, use one of these MLA or APA citers. We’re sure everyone can find a reference page maker to suit their taste.
So, here’s the list:
This is also an excellent citation machine for movies. You can find any film you need online through the service and get a reference you can use in a paper.
Access: free; subscription plan for extra features (save unlimited bibliographies and check for plagiarism); registration needed to download a citation in Word or switch format
Functionality: search by title, author, ISBN; the tool fills in the authors’ names and title of the book, while the year and location of publication need to be filled in manually
Extra Features: creating parenthetical citations, checking paper for plagiarism and grammar errors
2. BibMe.org
Check your paper for unintentional plagiarism with one click and use grammar suggestions to improve your writing style and get higher grades.
Access: free; subscription plan for extra features
Functionality: search by title, author, ISBN
Extra Features: bibliography and parenthetical citations, grammar and plagiarism check
3. EasyBib
The options of types of resources are unlimited—reference blogs, comics, digital images, federal rules, reports, online databases, patents, and many more.
Access: free citations without registration only in MLA style
Functionality: search by title, author, ISBN
Extra Features: APA, Chicago, and about 100 other citation styles are available for pro accounts only
4. CiteFast
Use a detailed description of your book, journal, newspaper, and other sources. Answer several questions to get the full reference.
Access: free access; registration needed only to see history of your citations
Functionality: search by title, author, ISBN
Extra Features: you can easily copy and paste your citations, export them in Word, and even keep them for 4 days in your account. Even if you have no account, the site will still show you your previous searches when you get back to it.
Cite This For Me is an automatic bibliography maker in APA and MLA formats.
Access: basic version is free; premium account ($15 per month) can be used for extra features
Functionality: different resource types; search by title, author, ISBN; export of bibliography or sharing it with a group
Extra Features: pro features include checking for plagiarism, downloading the tool as an add-on, and creating several bibliographies at the same time.
6. Paperpile
Access: a free Chrome extension
Functionality: creates citations in Chicago style only
Extra Features: free export and storage of references, alphabetical order of citations
7. ETurabian
Choose express or manual input to insert the necessary details. There is a wide choice of resource types from printed papers to audio files and other multimedia.
Access: free
Functionality: manual entry of details, auto-formatting
Extra Features: using online dissertation catalogues, exporting and sharing bibliographies
AMA generators are rare, and this one is an excellent example of a citation creator for this style.
Access: free; available as a Google Chrome extension
Functionality: search by Pubmed ID (recommended), DOI name, ISBN, URL; no manual entry of details needed
Extra Features: automatic generation of citations from any web page
Access: free; sign-up with Facebook is required
Functionality: search by author, title, ISBN, URL
Extra Features: plagiarism and grammar check
10. KnightCite
Access: free
Functionality: manual entry of data; a variety of resource types
Extra Features: save and edit previously saved citations
11. WorksCited4U
Access: free
Functionality: manual entry of data only
Extra Features: n/a
12. NoodleTools
Access: citations are free; extra payment for additional features (notecards, collaboration, and sharing features)
Functionality: manual entry
Extra Features: a premium account allows using note-taking tools and getting expert help
Access: free
Functionality: manual entry
Extra Features: sorting citations, checking format, saving them as a Word document or a Google doc
14. CiteMaker
Access: free; registration for saving a bibliography for 30 days
Functionality: manual entry
Extra Features: in-text citations and bibliography entries
15. CitationBuilder
Access: free
Functionality: manual entry
Extra Features: entries can be easily copied and pasted from the pop-up window
Access: free; no registration
Functionality: manual entry
Extra Features: creating citation lists
17. ResearchoMatic
Access: free; registration necessary
Functionality: manual entry of details
Extra Features: sharing your findings with others
18. ClassTools.net
Access: free
Functionality: search by keywords, title, URL
Extra Features: online research
19. AcademicHelp.net
Access: free
Functionality: manual entry
Extra Features: copy and paste the received citation
20. WritingHouse
Access: free
Functionality: search by title, author, ISBN, and automatic generation of citations
Extra Features: adding citations to bibliographies
21. CitationProducer
Access: free
Functionality: manual entry of data
Extra Features: search by ISBN
Access: free
Functionality: search by PMID, DOI, NCT
Extra Features: help with using the numerical findings of a study
Access: free
Functionality: search by DOI, PMID, URL
Extra Features: copy as HTML or text
24. Make Citation
Access: free
Functionality: manual entry
Extra Features: n/a
25. Zotero
Access: free
Functionality: automatically generates a citation
Extra Features: saving and sharing the resources you find
26. Mendeley
Access: free
Functionality: automatically-generated bibliography based on your library, the opportunity to share resources with other users, help with keeping all the documents in one easy-to-manage library
Extra Features: import papers from other software, access from your computer, tablet, or smartphone
Why?
Because you don’t need to put in all the information. Just search for the key characteristics such as title or author.
This method also has a disadvantage:
You can cite only those sources the library has.
Access: free
Functionality: find the book, article, or periodical by searching title, author, or year, click on the citation symbol and get an automatic description in APA, Chicago, Harvard, or MLA
Extra Features: e-mail your sources or save them to use later, export documents to RefWorks
28. Google Scholar
Access: Free
Functionality: thousands of publications to use for your academic paper or other research, citation styles: MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver
Extra Features: save sources in your Google account (need to log in), click “Related articles” to find additional relevant publications
29. Citation Wizard
Access: free
Functionality: create a new document online, cite books, digital sources, and periodicals
Extra Features: save documents as .rtf or .cw, cite a whole range of sources including poems, charts, lectures, plays, live performance, unpublished dissertations, telephone interviews, and more
Comments (19)
Many many quality points there.
Hi Krystalyn,
thanks for your feedback!
nice
I’m glad you liked it, Reena!
Nice post! helpful
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
Compelling stuff, I hadn’t been back to smart.study in a bit but I love the content you’ve added :-)
Thank you for your kind words about our work :)
A website called Formatically also has a really nice citation tool found at formatically.com/citation-tool. It is definitely the fastest citation tool out there for APA and MLA. I used it this past year in college.
Thanks for the information, Tyler!
Citation Maker is not just APA–It also has MLA for both Secondary students https://secondary.oslis.org/cite-sources/mla-secondary-citation
and for elementary students https://secondary.oslis.org/cite-sources/mla-elementary-citation
Thank you for the information, Marlene!
It is, in reality, a nice and useful piece of information. I’m satisfied that you simply shared this useful info with us.
Please stay us up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.
curassow (Dewey)
I’m happy the article was useful for you, Brigette!
Thank you. This was very helpful!
Glad the article was helpful for you, Mariana!
So many of these will only give you one ad-free citation. I am tired of having to wait minutes at a time for each page to load because the text shifts every time an ad processes and I end up clicking on the ad instead of my citation. I want a citation generator that isn’t spammy. But they are all the same.
Thanks for all these great resources! I’m focusing on Turabian.
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You’re welcome, John!