Citation Generator

In short Citation styles differ in what they emphasise, which is why the same source looks so different across them. APA leads with the year because recency matters in the sciences. MLA leads with the page reference because close reading of a text matters in the humanities. Chicago offers notes-and-bibliography for history and author-date for the sciences. Harvard is a family of author-date styles rather than one standard, which is why two universities give different Harvard rules and both are right. IEEE and Vancouver number citations in order of appearance. Two things cause most lost marks. Inconsistency — mixing two styles in one document is more visible to a marker than using the wrong one consistently. And missing access dates on web sources, which most styles require because a web page can change or vanish. Check what your institution specifies rather than assuming, since departments override the general style guide often. And check the generated reference against the source: a citation is only as good as the details entered, and a wrong year is still wrong beautifully formatted.