Search form

  • About Faculty Development and Support
  • Programs and Funding Opportunities
  • Consultations, Observations, and Services
  • Strategic Resources & Digital Publications
  • Canvas @ Yale Support
  • Learning Environments @ Yale
  • Teaching Workshops
  • Teaching Consultations and Classroom Observations
  • Teaching Programs
  • Spring Teaching Forum
  • Written and Oral Communication Workshops and Panels
  • Writing Resources & Tutorials
  • About the Graduate Writing Laboratory
  • Writing and Public Speaking Consultations
  • Writing Workshops and Panels
  • Writing Peer-Review Groups
  • Writing Retreats and All Writes
  • Online Writing Resources for Graduate Students
  • About Teaching Development for Graduate and Professional School Students
  • Teaching Programs and Grants
  • Teaching Forums
  • Resources for Graduate Student Teachers
  • About Undergraduate Writing and Tutoring
  • Academic Strategies Program
  • The Writing Center
  • STEM Tutoring & Programs
  • Humanities & Social Sciences
  • Center for Language Study
  • Online Course Catalog
  • Antiracist Pedagogy
  • NECQL 2019: NorthEast Consortium for Quantitative Literacy XXII Meeting
  • STEMinar Series
  • Teaching in Context: Troubling Times
  • Helmsley Postdoctoral Teaching Scholars
  • Pedagogical Partners
  • Instructional Materials
  • Evaluation & Research
  • STEM Education Job Opportunities
  • Yale Connect
  • Online Education Legal Statements

You are here

Citing internet sources, internet sources - general information, special demands of internet sources.

  • Copying Text without Plagiarizing

How to Cite Internet Sources

Print sources posted online, online versions of print periodicals, databases (like lexis-nexis), online journals, organization websites, topic websites, private websites, online video (like youtube), forums, listservs, chats, & bulletin boards, email & instant messages, i nternet vs. print sources.

Some professors will discourage you from using sources you find or access over the Internet. Although such restrictions may be excessive, there are reasons to be wary. It’s much easier to publish information on the Internet than to publish a book or periodical in print. Since it’s easier, Web posters are not always as careful to make sure that the information is accurate. For one thing, print publishing is more expensive, so many print publishers are careful not to make mistakes or to cut corners, in case what they publish turns out to be unreliable—and therefore useless. The seeming anonymity of the Internet also encourages some people to write things quickly, without checking to be sure of their facts or their conclusions. Most of us have had the experience of sending by email something we wrote quickly—perhaps when rushed or angry. Often these are things we wouldn’t print, sign, and mail, because those extra steps give us time to consider our words more carefully, and also because we recognize a higher expectation that things in print should be trustworthy.

N o Author, No Authority

In the context of writing in college, material from much of the Internet is less reliable than print sources because it’s hard to tell who wrote or posted it. As discussed in the section  Why Cite? , the essence of academic scholarship is a conversation among authors. On many websites, it’s difficult to determine the author of the material. If the site creator’s name is listed, it’s still sometimes hard to tell whether the information has been reprinted from some other source. If you reach a website through a search engine, you may have to find the site’s homepage or search around in the “contact” information in order to identify the author or the organization that sponsors the site. Even if you find the author’s name, Internet sources make it harder to tell what status that person has in his or her field. Is the author an expert, a fan, or just a crackpot? After finding a website that seems useful and tracking down the author’s name, you may need additional research (perhaps using Google) to learn whether the author has any claim to credibility.

But of course, countless reliable sources can be accessed on the web, and even unreliable sources have some uses in research writing. (See  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more about unreliable sources.) These days, many students and scholars use Web sources extensively in research and teaching. But they take extra care to assess and report the provenance of these sources.

Types of Websites

In this guide’s discussion of Internet sources, we draw distinctions between various kinds of websites: those sponsored by  organizations , those devoted to a  single topic , and  private websites  that are maintained by a single person—often a devoted fan of the topic under discussion. To some degree, these categories distinguish more and less reliable sources of information. But the distinctions are neither clear nor entirely stable. Some organizations, while established leaders in their fields, have very few resources available to maintain and update their websites. Some private individuals, although hosting websites as a hobby, are experts in their fields and consider accuracy on their sites to be the highest priority. It’s often useful to identify your source in the body of your paper (and not just in your citation or footnote); this identification is especially important when you use material from the Internet. If you give a sense of what kind of Web source you’re using, the reader will be better able to understand the context of your evidence.

Basics of Citing Websites

When listing Internet sources in your References or Works Cited, the most important thing to remember is that your goal is to make it easy for a reader to consult your sources. (This same goal is paramount when listing print sources.) For most sites, that means you should include the  full  URL for the page you cite in your paper (the web address that begins “http”). But websites change, and the address you used won’t always be active when your reader tries to view a source. For that reason, it’s important to include both the date you accessed the site and also a full account of the person, group, or organization that sponsors the site. Knowing more about the author helps readers to assess the source and also, sometimes, to find the source when the website has been moved or revised.

The general form of a citation from an Internet source is:

Author’s name. Title of Document. Title of Website. Sponsor of Website. Date of Document. Date of Access. URL.

As you will see in the discussion of specific categories, however, some of these items may be hard to determine.

Avoiding Plagiarism

The ease of using electronic sources of any kind can make it harder to keep track of where the source ends and your original contribution begins—and you must always keep that distinction clear. See  How to Copy and Paste but Not Plagiarize  for advice about how to use electronic sources wisely.

Respecting Privacy

Most of this guide focuses on helping you subordinate sources to your own ideas. In general, we highlight your need to respect authors’  intellectual  or  property  rights, explaining how to give people credit for their ideas while distinguishing your own original contributions. But the ease of using electronic sources also raises dangers about what might be called  privacy  rights, leading you to make public words that the original author intended only as private communication. When someone speaks in public, participates in an interview, or publishes a piece of writing, he or she implicitly agrees that other people may refer to this material in research. But some electronic sources blur the line between public and private communication. (Private communications also have a different force of authority than deliberately published material; see  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more information.)

If in doubt about whether a given text should be considered public or private, we urge you to check with the original author before quoting it in your own work. Although the following categories overlap, they may help you decide when more care is warranted to avoid an invasion of privacy. (1) Web versions of sources that also appear in print are generally safe to quote, since most print publishers take care to secure rights before publication. (2) Publicly accessible websites are generally safe to quote. You may occasionally find a website reposting information that’s clearly from category 3, in which case you may wish to contact the original author before using the material. But if you can access the information through regular surfing, without passwords, it’s probably safe to use. (3) Communications sent via email or accessed by membership in a specific group are generally considered private, and you should exercise care in quoting from them in your papers.

Even in this last category, there’s not a hard and fast rule you can follow. If your university sends an announcement to all students via email, you may reasonably consider this public information. If your best friend reveals something damaging or embarrassing in an email sent only to you, it’s clearly private. But what if a professor writes to you about something related to the course? Or if you receive a message that’s sent only to the members of a small club? What about the discussion forums that many courses set up for students to exchange ideas about the readings? These cases are all ambiguous. Unless there’s been an explicit agreement that the material is public, we encourage you to check before using such messages in your work.

Copying Text Without Plagiarizing

One convenience of using electronic sources is the ability—once you’ve selected the passages you wish to quote—to copy and paste quotations instead of having the retype them into your paper. Even before you begin drafting a paper, copying and pasting sections from your sources seems an easy way to take notes, so that you can look the material over later without surfing back to the website. This very convenience, however, also leads writers into danger. In the midst of researching and taking notes, it’s just too easy to paste quotations into your file with the intention to go back later and note down the source. When you return to your draft, it can be hard to distinguish your own writing from the passages you’ve copied.

As discussed in  Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism , the worst consequence of failing to acknowledge sources is to yourself: if you paste in someone’s words as your own, you will miss the opportunity to add your commentary, and therefore miss an opportunity to grow as a thinker and writer. Most of this guide focuses on such intellectual reasons for working properly with sources, rather than emphasizing the penalties of plagiarism. But because the copy and paste technique is so common, it’s especially important to warn you about its potential for abuse. Every year students come before the Yale Executive Committee having committed plagiarism through pasting material from the Internet into their papers and then forgetting to go back and identify the sources. Even when the oversight seems unintentional, these students are guilty of plagiarism, and must face penalties.

But you can avoid this danger with one very simple precaution:

Every time you highlight material from a website to use in your paper, save the material to a new file. Copy the URL (the full web address that begins with “http”) at the top of the new file, and give the file a name that briefly identifies the website.

Taking this extra step will allow you to review your sources when you’ve made more progress with your paper. So if you were thinking of using a piece of this web page in your paper, you’d copy the relevant portion into a Word file, add the URL, and perhaps call the file “Writing at Yale Copy/Paste Advice.” You’ll still be able to avoid retyping by copying and pasting from the new file you’ve made. But you will have created a record of your excerpts to help you distinguish your sources from your own work. For your own convenience, you may also want to add other citation information below the URL—such as author and date of access—before moving on to examine the next website. See  Special Demands of Internet Sources  for more information about how to cite websites. See also  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for advice about how to use Internet sources effectively.

Note: Even when you properly identify Internet sources, the very pasting that feels like a time-saver can lead you to use block quotations that are longer and less precise than necessary. Many writers, especially beginning academic writers, are better served by retyping quotations, because this extra step leads them to edit quotations and to paraphrase. You could still cut and paste to help you keep track of interesting passages before deciding which ones to quote in your paper (remembering, as suggested above, to create a new file for each website you work with).

MLA: Aristotle.  Nicomachean Ethics . 350 B.C.E. Trans. W. C. Ross.  The Internet Classics Archives . Ed. Daniel C. Stevenson. 1994. Web. 20 May 2015. [author.] [ title .] [original publication date.] [ website name .] [website author.] [update date.] [medium.] [date of access.]

APA: Aristotle. (1994).  Nicomachean ethics . (W. C. Ross, Trans.). In D. C. Stevenson (Ed.),  The internet classics archives . (Original work published 350 B.C.E.). Retrieved from  http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen(link is external) [author, by last name.] [(posting date).] [ title. ] [website author, (“Ed.”),] [ website name .] [(original publication date).] [ Retrieved   from  URL]

Note: in APA style, no access date is necessary for information that will not be changed or updated, like an electronic book or a journal or newspaper article.

Also note: when a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is available, list the DOI instead of the URL. (A DOI is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet.)

Chicago: 16. Aristotle,  Nicomachean Ethics . [fn. #.] [author last name,  shortened t itle .] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

Note: In the Bibliography, Chicago style does not generally include date of access.

Also note: You may notice that listing Internet sources often takes more time and care than listing print sources. Since the authorship and location of Web sources are harder to establish, readers need even more information in order to assess sources and to retrieve them for further study. See  Special Demands of Internet Sources  for more information.

MLA: Scott, Janny, and David Leonhardt. “Shadowy Lines That Still Divide.”  New York  Times  15 May 2005. Web. 20 May 2015. [author.] [“article title.”] [ periodical title ] [publication date.] [medium.] [date of access.]

APA: Scott, J., & Leonhardt, D. (2005, May 15). Shadowy lines that still divide.  New York Times.  Retrieved from  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0(link is external) [author.] [(publication date).] [article title.] [ periodical title. ] [ Retrieved from  URL]

Note: in APA style, no date of access is necessary for information that will not be changed or updated, like an electronic book or a journal or newspaper article.

Chicago: 17. Scott and Leonhardt, “Shadowy Lines.” [fn. #.] [author last name, “shortened title.”] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

If a print journal, magazine, or newspaper maintains a version of its publication URL online, articles that you cite are listed in your Works Cited or list of References by the name of the article’s author. In MLA style, the name is followed by the title of the article—in APA, the publication date comes after the author. (If no author is identified, list by the article’s title. In that case, be sure to give at least a few key words from the title in the body of your paper, so that readers know how to find the source in your bibliography.) Next list the title of the journal, magazine, or newspaper. Give the publication date of the article next for MLA, followed by the date that you accessed the site. For APA , give the full URL—the Web address that begins with “http.” When a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is available, list the DOI instead of the URL. (A DOI is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet.)

Note: If you use a database service (such as Lexis-Nexis) to access electronic sources, you must credit the database. See  Databases (like Lexis-Nexis)  for more information.

Also note: Although online versions of print sources are often more reliable than online journals or private websites, their reliability is no greater than that of their print versions. See  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more information.

MLA: Wallis, Claudia, et al. “The New Science of Happiness.”  Time  17 Jan. 2005: A1-A55.  Academic Search Premier . Web. 20 May 2015. [author, by last name.] [“article title.”] [ periodical title ] [publication date]: full page numbers for article.] [ database name .] [medium.] [date of access.]

APA: Wallis, C., Coady, E., Cray, D., Park, A., & Ressner, J. (2005, January 17). The new science of happiness.  Time , A1-A55. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier [author(s), by last name, initial).] [(publication date).] [article title.] [ periodical title ,] [full page numbers for article.] [ Retrieved   from  database name or URL]

Chicago: 18. Wallis et al., “The New Science.” [fn. #.] [author last name, “shortened title.”] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

Also note: In the Bibliography, Chicago style adds the URL (the Web address that begins with “http”), and does not name the database service directly if that name is part of the Web address. For Chicago, as for APA„ when a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is available, list the DOI instead of the URL. (A DOI is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet.)

Several companies maintain databases that make it easier to find articles on the topic you’re researching. Using these databases is especially helpful for connecting you to scholarly sources, which have been vetted by experts in their field before publication. The Yale library system subscribes to many such databases, allowing you to access them for free. See  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more information about using scholarly sources. If you use a service like this—such as Lexis-Nexis—to find an article that you then cite in your paper, you must include the database name in your Works Cited or list of References. (The principle is that you want your reader to know how to retrieve your source for further research.)

Note: You may notice that listing Internet sources often takes more time and care than listing print sources. Since the authorship and location of Web sources are harder to establish, readers need even more information in order to assess sources and to retrieve them for further study. See  Special Demands of Internet Sources  for more information.

Also note: Although online versions of print sources are often more reliable than  Online Journals  or  Private Websites , their reliability is no greater than that of their print versions. See  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more information.

Hitchens, Christopher. “Unfairenheit 9/11.”  Slate  21 June 2004. Web. 20 May 2015. < http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.single>.(link is external)>. [author, by last name.] [“article title.”] [ online journal title ] [posting date.] [medium.] [date of access.] [.]

Note: MLA style does not require the use of URLs in citations of internet sources. However, some instructors may prefer that you use URLs. In this case, MLA suggests that the URL appear in angle brackets after the date of access.

APA: Hitchens, C. (2004, June 21). Unfairenheit 9/11.  Slate . Retrieved from  http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.single(link is external) [author.] [(posting date).] [article title.] [ online journal title. ] [ Retrieved from  URL]

Chicago: 19. Hitchens, “Unfairenheit 9/11.” [fn. #.] [author last name, “shortened title.”] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

An online journal is a website that publishes new material on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), with a journal title or other masthead, but that does not release a print publication. An online journal is not the same as the online version of a periodical that also publishes in print. (See  Online Versions of Print Periodicals .) The distinction matters, because online journals—while often more reliable than  private websites —are often considered less reliable than print sources or Internet versions of print sources. See  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more information.

When including an article from an online journal in your Works Cited or list of References, list it by the name of the article’s author. This information is followed in MLA style by the article’s title, by the publication date in APA style. (If no author is identified, list by the article’s title.) Next list the online journal’s name. Give the publication date of the article (for MLA), followed by the date that you accessed the site. Finally, give the full URL—the Web address that begins with “http.” When a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is available, list the DOI instead of the URL. (A DOI is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet.)

MLA: Fangmann, Alexander. “Illinois Supreme Court Strikes Down Pension Cuts.” 11 May 2015.  World Socialist Web Site . Web. 20 May 2015. < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/11/illi-m11(link is external) >. [author, by last name.] [“section or page title.”] [posting date.] [ organization name. ] [date of access.] [.]

APA: Fangmann, A. (2015, May 11). Illinois Supreme Court strikes down pension cuts. Retrieved 20 May 2015, from the World Socialist Web Site: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/11/illi-m11(link is external) [author, by last name, initial.] [(posting date).] [page title.] [ Retrieved  date of access,] [ from  organization name:] [URL]

Chicago: 20. Fangmann, A. “Illinois Supreme Court.” [fn. #.] [author last name, “shortened title.”] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

Many organizations maintain websites hosting information about the organization or about the field that they work in. Some examples include commercial companies, universities, non-profit organizations, political groups, and government agencies. The reliability of these websites varies widely, as these organizations often use their websites to promote specific causes and may therefore emphasize only the facts and ideas that support their goals. See  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more information.

But sometimes these organizations have the most comprehensive coverage of topics that pertain to them. For certain topics, it’s also useful to examine what the interested parties say, even if you must remember to balance it with research into other points of view. If you are conscientious about identifying who sponsors the site, your reader will be better prepared to examine the material you present. Websites hosted by university departments and programs would generally be considered reliable sources, especially in their areas of scholarly expertise. (More caution is warranted when the site discusses politics or issues of university governance. Be careful, too, to distinguish sites created by individual faculty members from those sponsored by the larger institution.)

Whenever possible, you should identify the author of the material you use from a website. Some pages you access will have separate titles or sub-titles, which can be used like the titles of an  article in a journal . This title is followed by the name of the main website, if there is one, and the name of the sponsoring organization. After this comes the full URL for the material you’re using.The final item is the date that you accessed the site.

Note: It’s sometimes hard to find the author of material on an organization website. In that case, list by the title of the site—if there is one—or by the name of the organization. If you can’t find any of this information, even after searching through the site’s links, you may be using a  private website  or  topic website , and should review the information for those sources.

MLA: “The Horcrux of Love.”  Mugglenet.com: The #1 Harry Potter Site . 3 Jan. 2013. Web. 20 May 2015. < http://www.mugglenet.com/2013/01/the-horcrux-of-love(link is external) >. [“section or page title.”] [ website name .] [posting date.] [medium.] [date of access.] [.]

APA: The horcrux of love. (2013, Jan. 3).  Mugglenet.com: The #1 Harry Potter site . Retrieved 20 May 2015, from  http://www.mugglenet.com/2013/01/the-horcrux-of-love(link is external) [section or page title.] [(posting date).] [ website name .] [ Retrieved  date of access,] [ from  URL]

Chicago: 21. “The Horcrux of Love.” [fn. #.] [“shortened title.”] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

Websites that are  print sources posted online ,  online versions of print periodicals ,  online journals , or  organization websites  are discussed separately. By “topic websites,” we mean sites that are dedicated to a single issue, such as the life of a famous person, the main ideas of a social movement, or the details of a popular television show. This category is a little hard to define. Unlike online journals or other periodicals, topic websites are not usually revised on a regular schedule, although material may be added from time to time. And unlike organization websites, topic websites do not usually promote the products or mission of a particular institution—which means they also don’t have the organization’s reputation to back up their authority. Finally, topic websites may also overlap with private websites, which often focus on a single issue that their author is passionate about.

Still, the category is worth knowing about, because a lot of background information on general topics like “Medieval Literature” or “Film Noir” is found on websites that don’t easily fit any of the other categories. You’ll want to double-check material you find on Topic Websites, and you may need to treat them as  popular sources  rather than  scholarly sources . If you take these precautions, topic websites are sometimes useful for giving a broad overview or putting you on the track of more authoritative sources. (See  Special Demands of Internet Sources  for more information.)

When these websites appear to be wholly or primarily the work of one author, list by the author’s name, followed by the title of the article or specific page you’re using (if there is one), the website title (often the name of the topic), the date of posting (if known), the date you accessed it, and the full URL—the Web address that begins with “http.”

If the site you’re using is sponsored by an organization of some kind (like a company, a university department, or a political group), it may qualify as an  organization website , and you should review the information for those sources.

MLA: Mohanraj, Mary Anne. “The Early Years: 1971-1985.”  Mary Anne Mohanraj . 20 May 2015. Web. < http://www.mamohanraj.com/BioPhotos/bio1.html> . [author.] [“section or page title.”] [ website name. ] [date of access] [medium.] [.]

APA: Mohanraj, M. A. The early years: 1971-1985.  Mary Anne Mohanraj . Retrieved May 20, 2015, from  http://www.mamohanraj.com/BioPhotos/bio1.html [author.] [section or page title.] [ website name .] [ Retrieved  date of access,] [ from  URL]

Chicago: 22. Mohanraj, “The Early Years.” [fn. #.] [author last name, “shortened title.”] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

Private websites come in many forms. Some dabble in multiple topics, about which the site’s author may not even profess any special expertise. Some announce themselves as fan sites, indicating that the author has an intense interest but no special background or credentials. Still others are quite professional in presentation, with authors who profess or demonstrate vast experience.

Just a few years ago, unreliable websites were often riddled with typographical errors or burdened with amateurish design and graphics. But it’s increasingly easy to host websites that look polished and professional, which can make it hard to judge whether the site’s sponsors take seriously the responsibility to check and update their information. For the purpose of academic research, most private websites should be considered popular sources, which can be useful as sources of opinion but should generally not be relied on for authoritative information. (See  Popular vs. Scholarly Sources  for more information.)

It’s often useful to identify your source in the body of your paper (and not just in your citation or footnote); this identification is especially important when you use private websites. If you give a sense of what kind of web source you’re using, the reader will be better able to understand the context of your evidence. Private websites also raise issues of privacy, as some sites that require password access may not invite republication of their material in scholarly research. See  Special Demands of Internet Sources  for more information.

When using material from a private website, list by the author (if known), then by the title of the article or specific Webpage you’re using (if known), and the date of posting (if listed). Follow this by the title of the website, if applicable. If the site is part of an identifiable online group (like “Facebook” or “tumblr”), include that title next. Next, list the date that you accessed the site and the full URL—the Web address that begins with “http.”

Some of these details may be hard to identify. In the example above, for instance, it was not possible to determine when the specific section of the website was last updated. Only the date of access is given.

MLA: Martin, George R. R. “A Few More Last Words.”  Not a Blog .  8 May 2010. Livejournal. Web. 20 May 2015. < http://grrm.livejournal.com/152340> . [author, by last name.] [“title of entry.”] [ title of weblog .] [posting date.] [site sponsor or publisher.] [medium.] [date of access.] [.]

APA: Martin, G. R. R. (2010, May 8). A few more last words [Weblog post]. Retrieved May 20, 2015, from Livejournal:  http://grrm.livejournal.com/152340 [author, by last name, initial.] [(posting date).] [title of entry [format description].] [Weblog post.] [ Retrieved  date of access,] [ from  site sponsor or publisher:] [URL]

Chicago: 23. Martin, “Last Words.” [fn. #.] [author last name, “shortened title.”] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

Blogs—an abbreviation of “weblogs”—are websites or areas of websites devoted to dated reflections by the site’s author. Many blogs are hosted on or presented as private websites where the author claims little special expertise or no professional affiliation relevant to the blog’s topic. In these cases, see the discussion of  Private Websites , and use the same care when evaluating the material you access.

But blogs are increasingly included as a feature of  organization websites  (Amazon.com, for instance, now invites authors to post blogs on their work) or as elements of  online versions of print periodicals  (the  New York Times  website hosts several blogs by reporters and editors). When using a blog that’s identified with a larger journal or organization, follow the advice listed for those general sources.

Even when hosted by a recognized organization, most blogs should probably be treated as popular rather than scholarly sources. See  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more information.

The example above also lists “Livejournal” as the site’s sponsor. This information might be considered analogous to the organization that sponsors an  organization website . But in some cases, it may not be necessary to give the site sponsor. Livejournal, for instance, does not supervise posters’ comments very closely. A sponsor like “Facebook” has more rules and some restrictions to access, but is still doesn’t stand behind the material as much as an  online journal  would. When deciding whether to include the site sponsor, use your judgment: if the blog pursues a theme in common with the sponsor, list the sponsor.

Note: It’s often useful to identify your source in the body of your paper (and not just in your citation or footnote); this identification is especially important when you use blogs. If you give a sense of what kind of web source you’re using, the reader will be better able to understand the context of your evidence. See  Special Demands of Internet Sources  for more information.

The formats below cover the most common ways to cite video clips that were published online (on sites like YouTube and Vimeo). Video that was first published elsewhere but accessed online (on sites like Netflix and Hulu) is cited differently. See the notes that follow for more information.

MLA: TED. “Philip Zimbardo: The Psychology of Evil.” Online video clip.  YouTube . YouTube, 23 Sept. 2008. Web. 8 Aug 2015. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg>  [author’s name or screen name.] [“title of video.”] [media type.] [ name of website .] [site sponsor or publisher,] [posting date.] [medium.] [date of access.] [.]

APA: TED. (2008, Sept. 23).  Philip Zimbardo: The psychology of evil [Video file]. Retrieved Aug. 8, 2015, from  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg [author’s name or screen name.] [(posting date).] [ title of entry [format description].] [ Retrieved  date of access,] [ from  URL]

Note: If you know both the author’s name and his or her screen name (and they are different from one another), APA style cites the author’s name first (last name, first initial) followed by the screen name in square brackets (e.g. Booker, J [jbook].).

Chicago: 24. TED, “Philip Zimbardo.” [fn. #.] [author name or screen name, “shortened title.”] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

Like other film and video formats, conventions for citing online video are less fixed than those for print or other kinds of online sources. The citation for a video clip that was first published online typically attributes the clip to the individual who posted it on the Internet. Video that was first published elsewhere before being posted online, is usually attributed to the individuals most responsible for making it—the director or performers. See the citation formats for Film & Video and Television, Radio Program, or Music Video for more information.   Depending on who seems most responsible for the existence of the video you’re citing, you may choose to attribute an online video to its creators rather than the individual who posted it. For example, a film that is released online or an ongoing web series, may be more accurately attributed to the director or actors than the person who uploaded it to the Internet. For citation formats that attribute video to the actors or director, see Film & Video and Television, Radio Program, or Music Video .  

MLA: Levy, Michael. “Re: your canon?” Science Fiction Research Association, 19 Apr. 2006. Web. 26 June 2006. < sfra-l@wiz.cath.vt.edu (link sends e-mail) >. [author, by last name.] [“title or subject line.”] [discussion group,] [posting date.] [medium.] [date of access.] [.]

APA: Levy, M. (2006, April 19). Re: your canon? [Electronic mailing list message]. Retrieved June 26, 2006 from  sfra-l@wiz.cath.vt.edu (link sends e-mail) . [author, by last name, initial.] [(posting date).] [title or subject line [format description].] [ Retrieved  date of access  from  address.]

Chicago: 24. Levy, “Re: your canon?” [fn. #.] [author last name, ”title or subject heading.”] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

There are many electronic forums that allow users with a specific interest or affiliation to discuss topics with each other. Some of these are restricted to members of a group, or of a specific course. (Many Yale courses, for instance, provide forum discussions through the Classesv2 server.) Other such discussions are open to any interested party. Although discussions limited to professionals in a field may be more authoritative, in general you should probably treat material from these forums as popular rather than scholarly sources. See  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more information.

Note: Many such forums expect communications to be private. Be sure to check the group’s policies on reproduction of such material. Even if an FAQ or moderator seems to make reproduction permissible, a decent respect for privacy suggests that you secure the poster’s permission before making the material public.

If you use material from an electronic forum, list by author’s name. Follow that with the most specific identifying information you can give about the particular post. Depending on the type of discussion, there may be subject headings or specific message numbers on a given post. You may or may not be able to tell the posting date.

In MLA style, include the name of the sponsoring forum. Since most of these discussions do not supervise postings, do not put the sponsor name in italics. Follow this with the date you accessed the material. Even when membership is restricted to a particular organization, most listervs should probably be treated as popular rather than scholarly sources. See  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more information.

The last item in your listing—the electronic address—brings up one point on which MLA and APA styles differ starkly: in APA, if the posting cannot be retrieved, you cite it in your paper as a personal communication and do not include it in your list of References. Even in MLA style, it’s better to cite the message in the form that’s most easily accessible to your reader: many listservs archive their messages on the web, for instance, even though the original postings are delivered by email. Try to include the archive address.

Also note: As discussed in  Signaling Sources , it’s often useful to identify your source in the body of your paper (and not just in your citation or footnote); this identification is especially important when you use listservs. If you give a sense of what kind of Websource you’re using, the reader will be better able to understand the context of your evidence. See  Special Demands of Internet Sources  for more information.

MLA: Donahue, Tiane. “Re: Your WPA Question.” Message to the author. 14 Dec. 2004. Email. [author, by last name.] [“title or subject line.”] [message recipient.] [message date.] [medium.]

APA: Do not include in list of References. Cite in your paper as a personal communication.

Chicago: 25. Tiane Donahue, “Re: Your WPA Question,” email message to author, December 14, 2000. [fn. #.] [author full name, “subject heading,”] [type of message,] [date of message.]

Note: Chicago style footnotes give full information for private messages, but does not list them in the Bibliography.

It’s probably obvious that the authority of material that comes in private communications varies greatly with the status of the source. What someone writes to you by email may be useful as a source of opinion, but can seldom be relied on as definitive information, unless you’re in correspondence with a recognized expert. And even in these cases, the informality of email makes most authors much less careful about checking facts and conclusions, rendering the information less authoritative. Most email messages should probably be treated as popular rather than scholarly sources. See  Scholarly vs. Popular Sources  for more information.

Note: Most people consider email to be private. Even if the message is sent to more than one recipient, a decent respect for privacy suggests that you secure the sender’s permission before making the material public. If you received the message as a forward, the obligation to seek permission is even more urgent, as the original author likely has no reason to expect you to use the message in your own work. See  Special Demands of Internet Sources  for more information.

If you do use material from an email, the format for listing in MLA style is fairly simple, as in the example above: Author, Subject, “Email to the author,” and Date.

In APA style, you do not include in your list of References any source that can’t be retrieved by your reader. If you use email in your paper, cite it as a personal communication in your text, and do not list it at the end. For Chicago style, private messages are given full citation in a footnote, but not included in the Bibliography.

Note: As discussed in the section on  Signaling Sources , it’s often useful to identify your source in the body of your paper (and not just in your citation or footnote); this identification is especially important when you use private messages. If you give a sense of what kind of source you’re using, the reader will be better able to understand the context of your evidence. See  Special Demands of Internet Sources  for more information.

MLA: “King Arthur.”  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia . Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 18 May 2015. Web. 20 May 2015. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur(link is external) >. [“page title.”] [ website name. ] [site sponsor or publisher,] [date of last revision.] [medium.] [date of access.] [.]

APA: King Arthur. (n.d.). In  Wikipedia . Retrieved July 26, 2006, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur(link is external) [page title.] [(“n.d.”).] [ In  website name.] [ Retrieved  date, from: URL]

Chicago: 26. “King Arthur.” [fn. #.] [“title.”] [Shortened Chicago reference; see  More Notes on Chicago Style  for more information.]

To list material from Wikipedia, you should review the advice for  organization websites . But Wikipedia merits additional attention because of its recent growth and popularity. Some professors will warn you not to use Wikipedia because they believe its information is unreliable. As a community project with no central review committee, Wikipedia certainly contains its share of incorrect information and uninformed opinion. And since it presents itself as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia can sometimes seem more trustworthy than the average website, even to writers who would be duly careful about  private websites  or  topic websites . In this sense, it should be treated as a popular rather than scholarly source. See  Popular vs. Scholarly Sources  for more information.

But the main problem with using Wikipedia as an important source in your research is not that it gets things wrong. Some of its contributors are leaders in their fields, and, besides, some print sources contain errors. The problem, instead, is that Wikipedia strives for a lower level of expertise than professors expect from Yale students. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is written for a common readership. But students in Yale courses are already consulting primary materials and learning from experts in the discipline. In this context, to rely on Wikipedia—even when the material is accurate—is to position your work as inexpert and immature.

If you use Wikipedia for general background, check several other sources before using the material in your essays. Some of the facts you find may be attributable to common knowledge (see  Common Knowledge  for more discussion). You may also be able to track opinions or deeper ideas back to their original sources. In many cases, your course readings will contain similar ideas in better, more quotable language. Many student writers are tempted to use Wikipedia for definitions of terms (the same way a beginning writer might quote a dictionary). But in most cases, a definition drawn or paraphrased from the primary course readings—or from other scholarly sources—will be more effective. See  Why Cite?  for more discussion of definitions and keyterms.

Of course, if you do use language or information from Wikipedia, you must cite it—to do otherwise constitutes plagiarism. The advice here is not to hide what Wikipedia contributes to your ideas, but rather to move beyond Wikipedia and write from a more knowledgeable, expert stance.

YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN

how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

Reserve a Room

The Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning partners with departments and groups on-campus throughout the year to share its space. Please review the reservation form and submit a request.

female student and female tutor

Drop-In Writing Partners

Writing Partners are Yale College or graduate school students selected for both their writing skills and their ability to talk about writing. They have a student’s-eye view of the challenges you’ll face in writing papers.

how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

Writing Handouts

Principles, strategies, and models to deepen your understanding of what good writing looks like—and how to achieve it.

Works-Cited-List Entries

How to cite an online work.

To create a basic works-cited-list entry for an online work, list the author, the title of the work, the title of the website as the title of the container, and the publication details. You may need to include other elements depending on the type of work (e.g., book, scholarly article, blog post) and how you accessed it (e.g., from a journal website, from a database). Below are sample entries for online works along with links to posts containing many other examples.

Article on a website

Deresiewicz, William. “The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur.” The Atlantic , 28 Dec. 2014, theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/ the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-thecreative-entrepreneur/383497/.

Book on a website

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Masque of the Red Death.” The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe , edited by James A. Harrison, vol. 4, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1902, pp. 250-58. HathiTrust Digital Library , hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924079574368.

Journal Article in a Database

Goldman, Anne. “Questions of Transport: Reading Primo Levi Reading Dante.” The Georgia Review , vol. 64, no. 1, spring 2010, pp. 69-88. JSTOR , www.jstor.org/stable/41403188.

More Examples

Digital Sources

Government Publications

Journal Articles

Reference Works

Social Media  

  • Previous Example
  • Next Example
  • Utility Menu

University Logo

fa3d988da6f218669ec27d6b6019a0cd

A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

  • The Honor Code
  • Bibliography

If you are using Chicago style footnotes or endnotes, you should include a bibliography at the end of your paper that provides complete citation information for all of the sources you cite in your paper. Bibliography entries are formatted differently from notes. For bibliography entries, you list the sources alphabetically by last name, so you will list the last name of the author or creator first in each entry. You should single-space within a bibliography entry and double-space between them. When an entry goes longer than one line, use a hanging indent of .5 inches for subsequent lines. Here’s a link to a sample bibliography that shows layout and spacing . You can find a sample of note format here .

Complete note vs. shortened note

Here’s an example of a complete note and a shortened version of a note for a book:

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 27-35.

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated , 27-35.

Note vs. Bibliography entry

The bibliography entry that corresponds with each note is very similar to the longer version of the note, except that the author’s last and first name are reversed in the bibliography entry. To see differences between note and bibliography entries for different types of sources, check this section of the Chicago Manual of Style .

For Liquidated , the bibliography entry would look like this:

Ho, Karen, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street . Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.

Citing a source with two or three authors

If you are citing a source with two or three authors, list their names in your note in the order they appear in the original source. In the bibliography, invert only the name of the first author and use “and” before the last named author.

1. Melissa Borja and Jacob Gibson, “Internationalism with Evangelical Characteristics: The Case of Evangelical Responses to Southeast Asian Refugees,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 17, no. 3 (2019): 80-81, https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2019.1643983 .

Shortened note:

1. Borja and Gibson, “Internationalism with Evangelical Characteristics,” 80-81.

Bibliography:

Borja, Melissa, and Jacob Gibson. “Internationalism with Evangelical Characteristics: The Case of Evangelical Responses to Southeast Asian Refugees.” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 17. no. 3 (2019): 80–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2019.1643983 .

Citing a source with more than three authors

If you are citing a source with more than three authors, include all of them in the bibliography, but only include the first one in the note, followed by et al. ( et al. is the shortened form of the Latin et alia , which means “and others”).

1. Justine M. Nagurney, et al., “Risk Factors for Disability After Emergency Department Discharge in Older Adults,” Academic Emergency Medicine 27, no. 12 (2020): 1271.

Short version of note:

1. Justine M. Nagurney, et al., “Risk Factors for Disability,” 1271.

Nagurney, Justine M., Ling Han, Linda Leo‐Summers, Heather G. Allore, Thomas M. Gill, and Ula Hwang. “Risk Factors for Disability After Emergency Department Discharge in Older Adults.” Academic Emergency Medicine 27, no. 12 (2020): 1270–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/acem.14088 .

Citing a book consulted online

If you are citing a book you consulted online, you should include a URL, DOI, or the name of the database where you found the book.

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 27-35, https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1215/9780822391371 .

Bibliography entry:

Ho, Karen. Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street . Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1215/9780822391371 .

Citing an e-book consulted outside of a database

If you are citing an e-book that you accessed outside of a database, you should indicate the format. If you read the book in a format without fixed page numbers (like Kindle, for example), you should not include the page numbers that you saw as you read. Instead, include chapter or section numbers, if possible.

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), chap. 2, Kindle.

Ho, Karen. Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street . Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Kindle.

  • Citation Management Tools
  • In-Text Citations
  • Examples of Commonly Cited Sources
  • Frequently Asked Questions about Citing Sources in Chicago Format
  • Sample Bibliography

PDFs for This Section

  • Citing Sources
  • Online Library and Citation Tools

APA Citation Guide

  • Paper Formatting
  • Reference Components
  • Book Examples
  • Article Examples
  • Media Examples

Webpages / Web Documents

Entire websites, entry in an online dictionary, entries in online encyclopedias, online videos ( e.g. youtube, ted), online lecture notes or powerpoint slides, fact sheets & brochures, press releases, film or video review, online maps, chatgpt/generative ai.

  • Other Examples
  • In-Text Citations

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of page . Website. http://xxxxx

General copyright dates are not sufficient to use as the publication date. If no creation or publication date is given, use n.d. If the author and website are the same, omit the website.

Example 1: Author, No Date

Corcodilos, N. (n.d.). Keep your salary under wraps . Ask the Headhunter. http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/hasalary.htm

(Corcodilos, n.d.)

Example 2: Corporate Author

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2010). Facing down PTSD, vet is now soaring high . http://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/featureArticle_Feb.asp

(U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2010)

Example 3: Multiple Pages from One Website

If you are using multiple pages from one website that all have the same author and date, differentiate the dates with letters. Be sure that the citations are listed alphabetically by webpage title.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014a). Be safe after a hurricane . http://emergency.cdc.gov/disasters/hurricanes/be-safe-after.asp

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014a)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014b). Make a plan . http://emergency.cdc.gov/disasters/hurricanes/plan.asp

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014b)

If both items have n.d. instead of a year, include a hyphen before the differentiating letter:

Santa Fe College. (n.d.-a). Priority admissions dates . http://www.sfcollege.edu/admissions/index.php?section=priority_dates

(Santa Fe College, n.d.-a)

Santa Fe College. (n.d.-b). SF to UF: A true story . http://www.sfcollege.edu/gators/true-story/index

(Santa Fe College, n.d.-b)

Example 4: No Author

Appeal to authority . (n.d.). Logical Fallacies. https://www.logicalfallacies.org/appeal-to-authority.html

When citing as an in-text citation, you may abbreviate the title to the first few words, in quotations, unless the title is short:

("Appeal to Authority," n.d.)

Source:  Publication Manual , 10.16 (examples 111-114);  Webpage on a Website References [APA Style]

Simply give the URL of the website in the text:

The Lawrence W. Tyree Library website (http://www.sfcollege.edu/library) provides many resources for the students and faculty at Santa Fe College.

Source:  Publication Manual , 8.22;  Whole Website References [APA Style]

Author, A. A. (Year). Entry name. In Title of online dictionary . Retrieved Day Month, Year, from http://xxxxx.

Most online dictionaries will not have a date; include a retrieval date in this case.

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Chapfallen. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary . Retrieved March 10, 2020, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chapfallen

(Merriam-Webster, n.d.)

West, S. (2007). Online bully. In Urban dictionary.  https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=online%20bully&defid=2639710#2639710

(West, 2007)

Source: Dictionary Entry References [APA Style]

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of entry. In A. Editor (Ed.), Title of reference work (xx ed.). Website. http://xxxxx

Example 1: Individual Author

Masolo, D. (2006). African sage philosophy. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2008 ed.). Stanford University. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/african-sage/

(Masolo, 2006)

Example 2: Group Author

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.) Antisemitism. In Holocaust encyclopedia . Retrieved October 7, 2019, from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism

(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d.)

Note: If the author is the same as the website, omit the website component. If an encyclopedia is continuously updated and does not have an archived version, include the retrieval date.

Source: Publication Manual , 10.3 (examples 47-48)

Author, A. or ScreenName. (Year, Month Day). Title of blog post. Blog Title . http://xxxxx

Please note that for blogs, the post title is formatted normally and the blog title is italicized.

Example 1: Screen Name

Headsman. (2009, August 17). 1909: Madanlal Dhingra, Indian revolutionary.  ExecutedToday.com . http://www.executedtoday.com/2009/08/17/1909-madanlal-dhingra-indian-revolutionary/

(Headsman, 2009)

Example 2: Full Name

Wade, L. (2009, August 7). What makes a person homeless? Sociological Images . http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/08/07/what-makes-a-person-homeless/

(Wade, 2009)

Source: Publication Manual , 10.1 (example 17);  Blog Post and Blog Comment References [APA Style]

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of report (Report No. xxx). Website. http://xxxxx

Haugen, S. E. (2009). Measures of labor underutilization from the current population survey (Working Paper No. 424). Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://www.bls.gov/osmr/pdf/ec090020.pdf

(Haugen, 2009)

Example 2: Organizational Author

For agencies that are part of a hierarchy, you can use the specific agency instead of including the full hierarchy. If you introduce an abbreviation in your first in-text citation, you may use that abbreviation in subsequent citations.

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (2011). Your guide to anemia (NIH Publication No. 11-7629). http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/blood/anemia-yg.pdf

First Time: (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute [NHLBI], 2011)

All Subsequent Times: (NHLBI, 2011)

Note: if the author and website are the same, omit the website.

Example 3: Report Retrieved from Other Site

Matese, M. A. (1997, March). Accountability-based sanctions (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Fact Sheet No. 58). National Criminal Justice Reference Service. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/fs-9758.pdf

(Matese, 1997)

Source: Publication Manual , 10.4 (examples 50-52);  Report by a Government Agency References ; Report with Individual Authors References [APA Style]

Use this for videos posted on websites or blogs, such as YouTube, TED, a news website, etc. If you are citing a direct quotation from a video, you can use the time stamp in place of a page number within the in-text citation (see Example 1).

Author, A. A. [username]. (Year, Month Day). Title of video [Video]. Website. http://xxxxx

Example 1: Full Name

Jones, P. [patrickJMT]. (2009, October 24). Easily memorize the unit circle [Video]. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03McKEg9ASA

(Jones, 2009, 1:15)

Example 2: User Name Only

Vercamath. (2011, July 25). Parallel universes explained [Video]. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWaB3SksOQU

(Vercamath, 2011)

Example 3: TED Talk

Gavagan, E. (2012, April). A story about knots and surgeons [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/ed_gavagan_a_story_about_knots_and_surgeons

(Gavagan, 2012)

TED. (2016, August 30). Suzanne Simard: How trees talk to each other [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un2yBgIAxYs

(TED, 2016)

Note: If citing from the TED website, list the speaker as the author. If citing from YouTube, list TED (or the account) as the author and include the speaker's name in the title.

Sources:  Publication Manual , 9.8 and 10.12 (examples 88 and 90); YouTube Video References ; TED Talk References [APA Style]

You may also need to provide an attribution if you include the image in your paper. See Figures and Images .

Photographer, A. A. (copyright year). Title of photograph [Photograph]. Website. http://xxxxx

Zemlianichenko, A. (1997). Russian President Boris Yeltsin dancing at a rock concert [Photograph]. The Pulitzer Prizes. https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/alexander-zemlianichenko

(Zemlianichenko, 1997)

Artist, A. A. (copyright year). Title of work [Medium: Painting, drawing, sculpture, photograph, etc.]. Museum, Location. http://xxxxx

Flack, A. (1988). Islandia, goddess of the healing waters [Sculpture]. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL, United States. http://www.harn.ufl.edu/collections/8_e.html

(Flack, 1988)

Source: Publication Manual , 10.14 (examples 97 & 101);  Clip Art or Stock Image References ; Artwork References [APA Style]

Only include a full reference to lecture notes or class materials that are behind a login screen (such as Canvas) if you are writing for an audience that will be able to retrieve them. Otherwise, cite it as a personal communication .

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of presentation [Lecture notes or PowerPoint slides]. Website. http://xxxxx

Preskill, J. (n.d.). Chapter 4: Quantum entanglement [Lecture notes]. Caltech Particle Theory Group. http://www.theory.caltech.edu/people/preskill/ph229/notes/chap4.pdf

(Preskill, n.d.)

Matthews, D. (2019). [Lecture notes on evaluating Internet resources]. Canvas at Santa Fe College. https://courses.sfcollege.edu/login

(Matthews, 2019)

Source: Publication Manual , 10.14 (example 102); Classroom or Intranet Resources ;  PowerPoint Slide or Lecture Note References [APA Style]

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of brochure or fact sheet [Type]. Website. http://xxxxx.

If the author and website names are the same, omit the website component

Cancer Research UK. (2014). World cancer factsheet  [Fact sheet]. https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/sites/default/files/cs_report_world.pdf

(Cancer Research UK, 2014)

Nissan. (n.d.). 2020 Altima [Brochure]. Retrieved March 10, 2020, from https://www.nissanusa.com/content/dam/Nissan/us/vehicle-brochures/2020/2020-nissan-altima-brochure-en.pdf

(Nissan, n.d.)

Source: Fact Sheet References ; Brochure References [APA Style]

Author, A. A. or Organization. (Year). Title of press release [Press release]. http://xxxxx

Santa Fe College. (2010). Film production classes and casting agent coming to SF [Press release]. http://news.sfcollege.edu/read.php/2010/09/03/film-production-classes-and-casting-agent-coming-to-sf.html

(Santa Fe College, 2010)

Source:  Publication Manual , 10.4 (example 59);  Press Release References [APA Style]

Reviewer, A. A. (Year). Title of review [Review of the film Film , by A. A. Director, Dir.]. Website. http://xxxxx

Barsanti, C. (2011). The Muppets [Review of the film The Muppets , by J Bobin, Dir.]. Filmcritic. http://www.filmcritic.com/reviews/2011/the-muppets/

(Barsanti, 2011)

Source: Publication Manual , 10.7 (examples 67-68)

Author, A. A. (Role). (Year). Title of map [Map]. Website. http://xxxxx

Wise, G. D. (Cartographer). (1857). Preliminary survey of the mouth of the Apalachicola River, Florida [Map]. University of Florida. http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/maps/MAPFLL018.JPG

(Wise, 1857)

Source: Publication Manual , 10.14 (example 100)

Only cite an interview if it is retrievable. If it is a personal interview that is not able to be accessed by the reader, follow the guidelines for personal communication .

Interviewee, A. A. (Year, month day interviewed). Title of interview [Interview]. Website. http://xxxxx

Miller, C. (2019, October 7). Chanel Miller - Turning her pain into a rallying cry with Know My Name  - Extended interview [Interview]. Comedy Central. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-18-2012/salman-rushdie

(Miller, 2019)

Source: Publication Manual , 10.13 (example 95)

Please note: Wikipedia is a good resource for learning about a topic, but it is usually not an acceptable source to cite in a paper or research project for a class at Santa Fe College. This is due to the fact that it can be very unreliable and is not considered a reputable source.

Title of entry. (Year, Month Day). In Wiki Name . http://xxxxx

Example 1: Wikipedia

Constitution of the United States. (2019, October 7). In Wikipedia . https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Constitution_of_the_United_States&oldid=920036236

("Constitution," 2019).

Note: Provide the link to the archived version of the entry you use. Click View history and the time/date corresponding to the entry version you used.

Example 2: Another Wiki

Greek mythology. (2008). In Citizendium . Retrieved August 12, 2019, from http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Greek_mythology

("Greek Mythology," 2008).

Note: If there is no link to an archival version of the page, provide the retrieval date that you accessed the entry.

Source: Publication Manual , 10.3 (example 49); Wikipedia Entry References [APA Style]

Facebook Page

Author. (n.d.). Home [Facebook page]. Facebook. Retrieved Month Day, Year, from http://xxxxx

Florida Memes. (n.d.). Home [Facebook page]. Facebook. Retrieved October 8, 2019, from https://www.facebook.com/morefloridamemes/

(Florida Memes, n.d.)

How to Cite a Website and Online/Electronic Resources

The pages outlines examples of how to cite websites and media sources using the Harvard Referencing method .

What are electronic sources?

An electronic source is any information source in digital format. The library subscribes to many electronic information resources in order to provide access for students. Electronic sources can include: full-text journals, newspapers, company information, e-books, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, economic data, digital images, industry profiles, market research, etc. 

Should I include extra information when I cite electronic sources?

Referencing electronic or online sources can be confusing—it's difficult to know which information to include or where to find it. As a rule, provide as much information as possible concerning authorship, location and availability.

Electronic or online sources require much of the same information as print sources (author, year of publication, title, publisher). However, in some cases extra information may be required:

  • the page, paragraph or section number—what you cite will depend on the information available as many electronic or online sources don’t have pages.
  • identify the format of the source accessed, for example, E-book, podcast etc.
  • provide an accurate access date for online sources, that is, identify when a source was viewed or downloaded.
  • provide the location of an online source, for example, a database or web address.

In-text citations

Cite the name of the author/ organisation responsible for the site and the date created or last revised (use the most recent date):

(Department of Social Services 2020)

According to the Department of Social Services (2020) ...

List of References

Include information in the following order:

  • author (the person or organisation responsible for the site
  • year (date created or revised)
  • site name (in italics)
  • name of sponsor of site (if available) 
  • accessed day month year (the date you viewed the site)
  • URL or Internet address (between pointed brackets). If possible, ensure that the URL is included without a line-break.

Department of Social Services 2020, Department of social services website , Australian government, accessed 20 February 2020, <https: //www .dss.gov.au/>.

Specific pages or documents within a website

Information should include author/authoring body name(s) and the date created or last revised:

(Li 2004) or:

(World Health Organisation 2013) 

  • author (the person or organisation responsible for the site)
  • year (date created or last updated)
  • page title (in italics)
  • name of sponsor of site (if available)
  • accessed day month year (the day you viewed the site)
  • URL or Internet address (pointed brackets). 

One author:

Li, L 2014,  Chinese scroll painting H533 , Australian Museum, accessed 20 February 2016, <https: // australianmuseum.net.au/chinese-scroll-painting-h533>.

Organisation as author:

World Health Organisation 2013, Financial crisis and global health , The United Nations, accessed 1 August 2013, <http: //www .who.int/topics/financial_crisis/en/>.

Webpages with no author or date

If the author's name is unknown, cite the website/page title and date:

( Land for sale on moon 2007)  

Land for sale on moon   2007, accessed 19 June 2007, <http: // www . moonlandrealestate.com>.

If there is not date on the page, use the abbreviation n.d. (no date):

(ArtsNSW n.d.)

List if References

ArtsNSW n.d.,  New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards , NSW Department of the Arts, Sport and Recreation, accessed 19 June 2007, <http: // www . arts.nsw.gov.au/awards/ LiteraryAwards/litawards.htm>.

Kim, M n.d.,  Chinese New Year pictures and propaganda posters , Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, accessed 12 April 2016, <https: // collection.maas.museum/set/6274>.

Media articles (print)

If there is no author, list the name of the newspaper, the date, year and page number:

( The Independent 2013, p. 36)

If there is an author, cite as you would for a journal article:

(Donaghy 1994, p. 3)

Articles can also be mentioned in the running text:

University rankings were examined in a Sydney Morning Herald report by Williamson (1998, p. 21), where it was evident that ...

  • year of publication
  • article title (between single quotation marks)
  • publication title (in italics with maximum capitalisation)
  • date of article (day, month)
  • page number

Williamson, S 1998, ‘UNSW gains top ranking from quality team’, Sydney Morning Herald , 30 February, p.21. 

Donaghy, B 1994, ‘National meeting set to review tertiary admissions’, Campus News ,  3-9 March, p. 3.

An unattributed newspaper article:

If there is no named author, list the article title first:

  • Article title, between single quotation marks,
  • Publication title (in italics with maximum capitalisation)
  • Date published (date, month, year)
  • Page number (if available)

‘Baby tapir wins hearts at zoo’, The Independent , 9 August 2013, p. 36

Online media articles

A news article from an electronic database:

If the article has a named author:

(Pianin 2001)

  • author (if available)
  • newspaper title (in italics)
  • date of article (day, month, page number—if given—and any additional information available)
  • accessed day month year (the date you accessed the items)
  • from name of database
  • item number (if given).

Pianin, E 2001, 'As coal's fortunes climb, mountains tremble in W.Va; energy policy is transforming lives', The Washington Post,  25 February, p. A03, accessed March 2001 from Electric Library Australasia.

A news article without a named author:

No named author:

( New York Daily Times 1830)  

The article can also be discussed in the body of the paragraph:

An account of the popularity of the baby tapir in The Independent (2013) stated that ...

If there is no named author, list the article title first.

'Amending the Constitution', New York Daily Times , 16 October 1851, p. 2, accessed 15 July 2007 from ProQuest Historical Newspapers database.

'Baby tapir wins hearts at zoo', The Independent , 9 August 2013, Accessed 25 January 2014, <http: // www . independent.ie/world-news/and-finally/baby-tapir-wins-hearts-at-zoo-30495570.html>.

An online news article:

Cite the author name and year:

(Coorey 2007)

Coorey, P 2007, ‘Costello hints at green safety net’, Sydney Morning Herald , 10 May, accessed 14 May 2012, <http: // www . smh.com.au/news/business/costello-hints-at-green-safety-net/2007/05/09/1178390393875.html>.

While a URL for the article should be included, if it is very long (more than two lines) or unfixed (from a search engine), only include the publication URL:

Holmes, L 2017, 'The woman making a living out of pretending to be Kylie Minogue', The Daily Telegraph , 23 April, accessed 22 May 2017, <http: // www . dailytelegraph.com.au>.

Media releases

Cite the author (the person responsible for the release) and date:

Prime Minister Howard (2007) announced plans for further welfare reform...

  • author name or authoring organisation name
  • title of release (in italics)
  • accessed day month year
  • URL (between pointed brackets) 

Office of the Prime Minister 2007, Welfare Payments Reform , media release, accessed 25 July 2007, <http: // www . pm.gov.au/media/Release/2007/Media_Release24432.cfm>.

How to cite broadcast materials and communications

Harvard referencing

  • How to cite different sources
  • How to cite references
  • How to cite online/electronic sources
  • Broadcast and other sources
  • Citing images and tables
  • FAQs and troubleshooting
  • About this guide
  • ^ More support

Home / Guides / Citation Guides / How to Cite Sources

How to Cite Sources

Here is a complete list for how to cite sources. Most of these guides present citation guidance and examples in MLA, APA, and Chicago.

If you’re looking for general information on MLA or APA citations , the EasyBib Writing Center was designed for you! It has articles on what’s needed in an MLA in-text citation , how to format an APA paper, what an MLA annotated bibliography is, making an MLA works cited page, and much more!

MLA Format Citation Examples

The Modern Language Association created the MLA Style, currently in its 9th edition, to provide researchers with guidelines for writing and documenting scholarly borrowings.  Most often used in the humanities, MLA style (or MLA format ) has been adopted and used by numerous other disciplines, in multiple parts of the world.

MLA provides standard rules to follow so that most research papers are formatted in a similar manner. This makes it easier for readers to comprehend the information. The MLA in-text citation guidelines, MLA works cited standards, and MLA annotated bibliography instructions provide scholars with the information they need to properly cite sources in their research papers, articles, and assignments.

  • Book Chapter
  • Conference Paper
  • Documentary
  • Encyclopedia
  • Google Images
  • Kindle Book
  • Memorial Inscription
  • Museum Exhibit
  • Painting or Artwork
  • PowerPoint Presentation
  • Sheet Music
  • Thesis or Dissertation
  • YouTube Video

APA Format Citation Examples

The American Psychological Association created the APA citation style in 1929 as a way to help psychologists, anthropologists, and even business managers establish one common way to cite sources and present content.

APA is used when citing sources for academic articles such as journals, and is intended to help readers better comprehend content, and to avoid language bias wherever possible. The APA style (or APA format ) is now in its 7th edition, and provides citation style guides for virtually any type of resource.

Chicago Style Citation Examples

The Chicago/Turabian style of citing sources is generally used when citing sources for humanities papers, and is best known for its requirement that writers place bibliographic citations at the bottom of a page (in Chicago-format footnotes ) or at the end of a paper (endnotes).

The Turabian and Chicago citation styles are almost identical, but the Turabian style is geared towards student published papers such as theses and dissertations, while the Chicago style provides guidelines for all types of publications. This is why you’ll commonly see Chicago style and Turabian style presented together. The Chicago Manual of Style is currently in its 17th edition, and Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is in its 8th edition.

Citing Specific Sources or Events

  • Declaration of Independence
  • Gettysburg Address
  • Martin Luther King Jr. Speech
  • President Obama’s Farewell Address
  • President Trump’s Inauguration Speech
  • White House Press Briefing

Additional FAQs

  • Citing Archived Contributors
  • Citing a Blog
  • Citing a Book Chapter
  • Citing a Source in a Foreign Language
  • Citing an Image
  • Citing a Song
  • Citing Special Contributors
  • Citing a Translated Article
  • Citing a Tweet

6 Interesting Citation Facts

The world of citations may seem cut and dry, but there’s more to them than just specific capitalization rules, MLA in-text citations , and other formatting specifications. Citations have been helping researches document their sources for hundreds of years, and are a great way to learn more about a particular subject area.

Ever wonder what sets all the different styles apart, or how they came to be in the first place? Read on for some interesting facts about citations!

1. There are Over 7,000 Different Citation Styles

You may be familiar with MLA and APA citation styles, but there are actually thousands of citation styles used for all different academic disciplines all across the world. Deciding which one to use can be difficult, so be sure to ask you instructor which one you should be using for your next paper.

2. Some Citation Styles are Named After People

While a majority of citation styles are named for the specific organizations that publish them (i.e. APA is published by the American Psychological Association, and MLA format is named for the Modern Language Association), some are actually named after individuals. The most well-known example of this is perhaps Turabian style, named for Kate L. Turabian, an American educator and writer. She developed this style as a condensed version of the Chicago Manual of Style in order to present a more concise set of rules to students.

3. There are Some Really Specific and Uniquely Named Citation Styles

How specific can citation styles get? The answer is very. For example, the “Flavour and Fragrance Journal” style is based on a bimonthly, peer-reviewed scientific journal published since 1985 by John Wiley & Sons. It publishes original research articles, reviews and special reports on all aspects of flavor and fragrance. Another example is “Nordic Pulp and Paper Research,” a style used by an international scientific magazine covering science and technology for the areas of wood or bio-mass constituents.

4. More citations were created on  EasyBib.com  in the first quarter of 2018 than there are people in California.

The US Census Bureau estimates that approximately 39.5 million people live in the state of California. Meanwhile, about 43 million citations were made on EasyBib from January to March of 2018. That’s a lot of citations.

5. “Citations” is a Word With a Long History

The word “citations” can be traced back literally thousands of years to the Latin word “citare” meaning “to summon, urge, call; put in sudden motion, call forward; rouse, excite.” The word then took on its more modern meaning and relevance to writing papers in the 1600s, where it became known as the “act of citing or quoting a passage from a book, etc.”

6. Citation Styles are Always Changing

The concept of citations always stays the same. It is a means of preventing plagiarism and demonstrating where you relied on outside sources. The specific style rules, however, can and do change regularly. For example, in 2018 alone, 46 new citation styles were introduced , and 106 updates were made to exiting styles. At EasyBib, we are always on the lookout for ways to improve our styles and opportunities to add new ones to our list.

Why Citations Matter

Here are the ways accurate citations can help your students achieve academic success, and how you can answer the dreaded question, “why should I cite my sources?”

They Give Credit to the Right People

Citing their sources makes sure that the reader can differentiate the student’s original thoughts from those of other researchers. Not only does this make sure that the sources they use receive proper credit for their work, it ensures that the student receives deserved recognition for their unique contributions to the topic. Whether the student is citing in MLA format , APA format , or any other style, citations serve as a natural way to place a student’s work in the broader context of the subject area, and serve as an easy way to gauge their commitment to the project.

They Provide Hard Evidence of Ideas

Having many citations from a wide variety of sources related to their idea means that the student is working on a well-researched and respected subject. Citing sources that back up their claim creates room for fact-checking and further research . And, if they can cite a few sources that have the converse opinion or idea, and then demonstrate to the reader why they believe that that viewpoint is wrong by again citing credible sources, the student is well on their way to winning over the reader and cementing their point of view.

They Promote Originality and Prevent Plagiarism

The point of research projects is not to regurgitate information that can already be found elsewhere. We have Google for that! What the student’s project should aim to do is promote an original idea or a spin on an existing idea, and use reliable sources to promote that idea. Copying or directly referencing a source without proper citation can lead to not only a poor grade, but accusations of academic dishonesty. By citing their sources regularly and accurately, students can easily avoid the trap of plagiarism , and promote further research on their topic.

They Create Better Researchers

By researching sources to back up and promote their ideas, students are becoming better researchers without even knowing it! Each time a new source is read or researched, the student is becoming more engaged with the project and is developing a deeper understanding of the subject area. Proper citations demonstrate a breadth of the student’s reading and dedication to the project itself. By creating citations, students are compelled to make connections between their sources and discern research patterns. Each time they complete this process, they are helping themselves become better researchers and writers overall.

When is the Right Time to Start Making Citations?

Make in-text/parenthetical citations as you need them.

As you are writing your paper, be sure to include references within the text that correspond with references in a works cited or bibliography. These are usually called in-text citations or parenthetical citations in MLA and APA formats. The most effective time to complete these is directly after you have made your reference to another source. For instance, after writing the line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities : “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…,” you would include a citation like this (depending on your chosen citation style):

(Dickens 11).

This signals to the reader that you have referenced an outside source. What’s great about this system is that the in-text citations serve as a natural list for all of the citations you have made in your paper, which will make completing the works cited page a whole lot easier. After you are done writing, all that will be left for you to do is scan your paper for these references, and then build a works cited page that includes a citation for each one.

Need help creating an MLA works cited page ? Try the MLA format generator on EasyBib.com! We also have a guide on how to format an APA reference page .

2. Understand the General Formatting Rules of Your Citation Style Before You Start Writing

While reading up on paper formatting may not sound exciting, being aware of how your paper should look early on in the paper writing process is super important. Citation styles can dictate more than just the appearance of the citations themselves, but rather can impact the layout of your paper as a whole, with specific guidelines concerning margin width, title treatment, and even font size and spacing. Knowing how to organize your paper before you start writing will ensure that you do not receive a low grade for something as trivial as forgetting a hanging indent.

Don’t know where to start? Here’s a formatting guide on APA format .

3. Double-check All of Your Outside Sources for Relevance and Trustworthiness First

Collecting outside sources that support your research and specific topic is a critical step in writing an effective paper. But before you run to the library and grab the first 20 books you can lay your hands on, keep in mind that selecting a source to include in your paper should not be taken lightly. Before you proceed with using it to backup your ideas, run a quick Internet search for it and see if other scholars in your field have written about it as well. Check to see if there are book reviews about it or peer accolades. If you spot something that seems off to you, you may want to consider leaving it out of your work. Doing this before your start making citations can save you a ton of time in the long run.

Finished with your paper? It may be time to run it through a grammar and plagiarism checker , like the one offered by EasyBib Plus. If you’re just looking to brush up on the basics, our grammar guides  are ready anytime you are.

How useful was this post?

Click on a star to rate it!

We are sorry that this post was not useful for you!

Let us improve this post!

Tell us how we can improve this post?

Citation Basics

Harvard Referencing

Plagiarism Basics

Plagiarism Checker

Upload a paper to check for plagiarism against billions of sources and get advanced writing suggestions for clarity and style.

Get Started

  • Essay Check
  • Chicago Style
  • APA Citation Examples
  • MLA Citation Examples
  • Chicago Style Citation Examples
  • Writing Tips
  • Plagiarism Guide
  • Grammar Rules
  • Student Life
  • Create Account

MLA Website Citation

- powered by chegg, create citations for free.

Website Book Journal Other

←Back to MLA Citation Examples

How to cite a website in a bibliography using MLA

The most basic entry for a website consists of the author name(s), webpage title, website title, *sponsoring institution/publisher, publication date, and DOI or URL.

Author Last Name, First Name. “Webpage Title.” Website Title , *Sponsoring Institution/Publisher, Publication Date, DOI or URL.

Owoseje, Toyin. “Britney Spears Apologizes to Fans for ‘Pretending’ to be OK in her Conservatorship.” CNN , 25 June 2021, cnn.com/2021/06/25/entertainment/britney-spears-conservatorship-instagram-intl-scli/index.html.

*If the sponsoring institution or publisher’s name is the same as the website title, do not include it. MLA prefers to avoid duplicating information in citations.

The first author’s name should be reversed, with a comma after the last name, followed by a period after the first name (or any middle name). The name should not be abbreviated and should be written exactly as it appears on the website. Titles and affiliations associated with the author should generally be omitted. A suffix, such as a roman numeral or Jr./Sr. should appear after the author’s given name, preceded by a comma.

For a page with two or more authors, list them in the order they appear on the website. Only the first author’s name should be reversed, while the others are written in normal order. Separate author names by a comma, and place the word “and” before the last author’s name.

Sanchez, Ray, and Eric Levenson. “Derek Chauvin Sentenced to 22.5 Years in Death of George Floyd.” CNN , 25 June 2021, cnn.com/2021/06/25/us/derek-chauvin-sentencing-george-floyd/index.html.

For pages with three or more authors, reverse the first author’s name as described above and follow it with a comma and the abbreviation “et al.” Do not italicize “et al.” in parenthetical citations or works-cited list entries.

Rebaza, Claudia, et al. “John McAfee Was Not Suicidal, Says Widow of Antivirus Software Magnate.” CNN , 25 June 2021, cnn.com/2021/06/25/tech/john-mcafee-wife-janice-intl/index.html.

If the article was written by a news service or organization, include the name in the author position and remove any introductory articles (e.g.,  A, An, The) from the name.

Associated Press. “Obama Inaugurated as President.” CNN , 21 Jan. 2009, cnn.com/2009/01/21/politics/obama-inaugurated-as-president/index.html.

If no author is available, begin the citation with the webpage title.

“Obama Inaugurated as President.” CNN , 21 Jan. 2009, cnn.com/2009/01/21/politics/obama-inaugurated-as-president/index.html.

The webpage title should be placed within quotation marks. Place a period after the webpage title within the quotation marks. The webpage title is followed by the name of the larger website container in italics, and it’s usually followed by a comma and any additional information such as version, number, publisher, publication date, or URL. The punctuation before the version element varies depending on whether the webpage is part of a larger work or “container.” When it is part of a larger work, use a comma followed by the version. When it is a work that stands alone, use a period followed by the version.

Smith, John. “Obama Inaugurated as President.” CNN , Version 12.1.1., 21 Jan. 2009, cnn.com/2009/01/21/politics/obama-inaugurated-as-president/index.html.

Include the sponsoring institution or publisher with a comma after the website title (or version number, if available). The sponsoring institution/publisher can usually be found at the bottom of the website in the footer. You may omit the publisher’s name when there is no publisher or when the publisher name isn’t required (for example, when the publisher title matches the website title or the website doesn’t list the publisher responsible for producing the work).

Smith, John. “Obama Inaugurated as President.” CNN , 21 Jan. 2009, cnn.com/2009/01/21/politics/obama-inaugurated-as-president/index.html.

Next, state the publication date of the webpage.  In works-cited list entries, use only the day-month-year style. Month names should be abbreviated, except for May, June, and July, and followed by a period. In some cases, a specific date might not be available, and the date published may only be specific to a month or even year. Provide whatever date information is available. When using seasons in the date, lowercase the season (spring 2021 not Spring 2021). If there is no date available, you may omit the publication date element from your citation. However, you may wish to include an access date in the supplemental element slot after the URL.

Smith, John. “Obama Inaugurated as President.” CNN , cnn.com/2009/01/21/politics/obama-inaugurated-as-president/index.html.

Smith, John. “Obama Inaugurated as President.” CNN , cnn.com/2009/01/21/politics/obama-inaugurated-as-president/index.html. Accessed 21 Jan. 2021.

According to MLA’s 9th edition, updated in 2021, you may usually leave out http:// or https:// from URLs unless you want to hyperlink them or unless instructed otherwise. When in doubt, ask your instructor. If a DOI is available, use that instead of the URL. For DOIs, use http:// or https:// before the DOI: https://doi.org/xx.xxxx/xxx.xxxx.xxxx. Use a period after the DOI and the URL.

Smith, John. “Obama Inaugurated as President.” CNN , 21 Jan. 2009, https://doi.org/12.3456/789.1011.1213.

←Back to MLA Citation Guide

mla website bibme margaret atwood

“A word after a word after a word is power.” — Margaret Atwood

How useful was this post?

Click on a star to rate it!

We are sorry that this post was not useful for you!

Let us improve this post!

Tell us how we can improve this post?

For an online news source with more than two authors (3+), use “ et al ” after the first author to indicate “ and others ” in your works cited entry. With this format, you do not have to write all the authors’ names since you are indicating the same using “et al.”

Last Name, First Name1, et al. “Title of the article.” Title of the newspaper , Date of publication, URL.

Kamelion, North, et al. “How do Zebras stay awake in the forest amidst a scavenger hunt?” Taj Road Journal , 9 Aug. 2020, www.tajroadjournal.com/posts/253839.

If you have the same author as the first author in more than one entry, then distinguish these entries by listing two authors in the entries and using “et al” for the other authors.

If there is no author given for an online news source, then the in-text citation should include the first main word or words of the article title within the quotation marks. For example:

In a works-cited entry, you will include the article title, newspaper name, publication date, and URL. See below for the format and example.

“Article Title.” Newspaper , Date, URL.

“High Winds Blow Michigan Anglers, Ice Shanty about a Mile across Saginaw Bay.” Detroit Free Press , 2022 March 7, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2022/03/07/saginaw-bay-ice-shanty-winds/9411709002/.

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, automatically generate references for free.

  • Knowledge Base
  • Referencing
  • Harvard Style Bibliography | Format & Examples

Harvard Style Bibliography | Format & Examples

Published on 1 May 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on 7 November 2022.

In Harvard style , the bibliography or reference list provides full references for the sources you used in your writing.

  • A reference list consists of entries corresponding to your in-text citations .
  • A bibliography sometimes also lists sources that you consulted for background research, but did not cite in your text.

The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. If in doubt about which to include, check with your instructor or department.

The information you include in a reference varies depending on the type of source, but it usually includes the author, date, and title of the work, followed by details of where it was published. You can automatically generate accurate references using our free reference generator:

Harvard Reference Generator

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Be assured that you'll submit flawless writing. Upload your document to correct all your mistakes.

upload-your-document-ai-proofreader

Table of contents

Formatting a harvard style bibliography, harvard reference examples, referencing sources with multiple authors, referencing sources with missing information, frequently asked questions about harvard bibliographies.

Sources are alphabetised by author last name. The heading ‘Reference list’ or ‘Bibliography’ appears at the top.

Each new source appears on a new line, and when an entry for a single source extends onto a second line, a hanging indent is used:

Harvard bibliography

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

Reference list or bibliography entries always start with the author’s last name and initial, the publication date and the title of the source. The other information required varies depending on the source type. Formats and examples for the most common source types are given below.

  • Entire book
  • Book chapter
  • Translated book
  • Edition of a book

Journal articles

  • Print journal
  • Online-only journal with DOI
  • Online-only journal without DOI
  • General web page
  • Online article or blog
  • Social media post

Newspapers and magazines

  • Newspaper article
  • Magazine article

When a source has up to three authors, list all of them in the order their names appear on the source. If there are four or more, give only the first name followed by ‘ et al. ’:

Sometimes a source won’t list all the information you need for your reference. Here’s what to do when you don’t know the publication date or author of a source.

Some online sources, as well as historical documents, may lack a clear publication date. In these cases, you can replace the date in the reference list entry with the words ‘no date’. With online sources, you still include an access date at the end:

When a source doesn’t list an author, you can often list a corporate source as an author instead, as with ‘Scribbr’ in the above example. When that’s not possible, begin the entry with the title instead of the author:

Though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there is a difference in meaning:

  • A reference list only includes sources cited in the text – every entry corresponds to an in-text citation .
  • A bibliography also includes other sources which were consulted during the research but not cited.

In Harvard referencing, up to three author names are included in an in-text citation or reference list entry. When there are four or more authors, include only the first, followed by ‘ et al. ’

In Harvard style referencing , to distinguish between two sources by the same author that were published in the same year, you add a different letter after the year for each source:

  • (Smith, 2019a)
  • (Smith, 2019b)

Add ‘a’ to the first one you cite, ‘b’ to the second, and so on. Do the same in your bibliography or reference list .

To create a hanging indent for your bibliography or reference list :

  • Highlight all the entries
  • Click on the arrow in the bottom-right corner of the ‘Paragraph’ tab in the top menu.
  • In the pop-up window, under ‘Special’ in the ‘Indentation’ section, use the drop-down menu to select ‘Hanging’.
  • Then close the window with ‘OK’.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2022, November 07). Harvard Style Bibliography | Format & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 19 February 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/referencing/harvard-bibliography/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, a quick guide to harvard referencing | citation examples, harvard in-text citation | a complete guide & examples, referencing books in harvard style | templates & examples, scribbr apa citation checker.

An innovative new tool that checks your APA citations with AI software. Say goodbye to inaccurate citations!

how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

Current Students

Black patterned background

How to write a bibliography

How to write a bibiliography.

A bibliography is not just “works cited.” It is  all  the relevant material you drew upon to write the paper the reader holds.

Do I need a bibliography?

If you read any articles or books in preparing your paper, you need a bibliography or footnotes.

  • If you cite the arguments of “critics” and “supporters,” even if you don’t name them or quote them directly, you are likely referring to information you read in books or articles as opposed to information you’ve gathered firsthand, like a news reporter, and so you need a bibliography.
  • If you quote sources and put some of the reference information in the text, you still need a bibliography, so that readers can track down the source material for themselves.
  • If you use footnotes to identify the source of your material or the authors of every quote, you DO NOT need a bibliography, UNLESS there are materials to which you do not refer directly (or if you refer to additional sections of the materials you already referenced) that also helped you reach your conclusions. In any event, your footnotes need to follow the formatting guidelines below.

These guidelines follow those of the  American Psychological Association and may be slightly different than what you’re used to, but we will stick with them for the sake of consistency.

Notice the use of punctuation. Publication titles may be either  italicized  or underlined, but not both.

Books are the bibliography format with which you’re probably most familiar. Books follow this pattern:

Author Last Name, Author First Name. (Publication Year)  Title . Publisher’s City: Publisher. Page numbers.

Alexander, Carol. (2001)  Market Models: A Guide to Financial Data Analysis.  New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 200-220.

Periodicals

Periodicals remove the publisher city and name and add the title of the article and the volume or issue number of the periodical. Notice article titles are put in quotation marks and only the publication title is italicized or underlined.

Author Last Name, Author First Name. (Publication Date—could be more than a year) “Article Title.” Publication   Title, Vol. # . (Issue #), Page numbers.

Salman, William A. (July-August 1997) “How to Write a Great Business Plan.”  Harvard Business Review  74. pp. 98-108.

Web versions of printed material

Because web sources are time-sensitive, meaning that web content can change day by day, it is important to include the day of retrieval and the URL from which you quoted the material. You include this in a retrieval statement.

The format for online versions of print publications should basically follow the same format as above, meaning if you’re referencing an online book, you should follow the book format with the addition of the retrieval statement. If you’re referencing an online periodical, you should follow the periodical format with the addition of the retrieval statement.

Note that you should not break the Internet address of the link, even if it requires its own line. Very long URLs, such as those that occur when using an online database, can be shortened by removing the retrieval code. (The retrieval code usually consists of a long string of unintelligible letters and numbers following the end point “htm” or “html.” Remove everything that occurs after that point to shorten.)

Author. (Date of Internet Publication—could be more than a year) “Document Title.”  Title of Publication . Retrieved on: Date from Full Web Address, starting with http://

Grant, Linda. (January 13, 1997) “Can Fisher Focus Kodak?”  Fortune . Retrieved on August 22, 2020 from (insert full web address here)

The above is just one example of citing online sources. There are more extensive bibliographic guidelines at www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite6.html .

How to cite sources in the text

In-text citations alert readers to cited material and tell them exactly where to go and look. These citations work in conjunction with a bibliography.

  • Usually, an in-text citation is a combination of a name (usually the author’s) and a number (either a year, a page number, or both).
  • For Internet sources, use the original publication date, not your retrieval date.
  • Internet sources also do not have page numbers, so use your discretion in the format that will direct the reader closest to the relevant section. You can number the paragraphs (abbreviate “par.”) or chapters (abbreviate “chap.”) or sections (abbreviate “sec.”).
  • If there is no author listed, the document’s title should be used in place of the author’s name. Use the entire title but not the subtitle. Subtitles are anything appearing after a colon (:).

Use a signal phrase

A signal phrase alerts the reader to the fact that you are citing another source for the information he or she is about to read.

Myers (1997) reported that “structured decision aids, as a factor in a more structured audit approach, are designed to focus the auditor on relevant information to improve effectiveness, and to improve audit efficiency, by eliminating the time needed to develop or organize individual approaches to the audit problems.” (sec. 1, “Introduction”)

Note that the date goes with the author, directions within the document go with the quote.

Later on, same source, different section:

According to one study (Myers, 1997), inexperienced auditors from a structured firm will demonstrate higher audit effectiveness in the typical audit situation than inexperienced auditors from an unstructured firm. (sec. 2, “Structure and Audit Effectiveness”)

Full parenthetical citation after the material cited

Another method is to end the quote with the full citation:

The primary controversies surrounding the issue of accounting for stock-based compensation include whether these instruments represent an expense that should be recognized in the income statement and, if so, when they should be recognized and how they should be measured. (Martin and Duchac, 1997, Sec. 3, “Theoretical Justification for Expense Recognition”)

For long quotes, use a previewing sentence and a parenthetical citation

Long quotes are 40 words or longer and should be single-spaced even in double-spaced papers. The previewing sentence tells the reader what to look for in the quotes (and helps the reader change gears from you to another author).

Martin and Duchac (1997) reiterate the problems with stock-based compensation and accounting issues:

While it is true these estimates generate uncertainties about value and the costs to be recognized, cost recognition should be the fundamental objective and information based on estimates can be useful just as it is with defined benefit pension plans. Given the similarities between stock based compensation and defined benefit pension costs, an expense should be recognized for employee stock options just as pension costs are recognized for defined benefit pension plans. The FASB agreed with this assessment in their exposure draft on stock based compensation, noting that nonrecognition of employee stock option costs produces financial statements that are neither credible nor representationally faithful. (sec. 2.1, “Recognition of Compensation Cost”)

Note the consistent indentation and the paragraph break inside the quote. Also note that the parenthetical citation falls outside the closing period.

Source-reflective statements

Sometimes, summarizing arguments from your sources can leave the reader in doubt as to whose opinion he or she is seeing. If the language is too close to the original source’s, you can leave yourself open to charges of low-level plagiarism or “word borrowing.” Using a source-reflective statement can clarify this problem, allowing you the freedom to assert your voice and opinion without causing confusion. For example:

Myers (1997) reported that “structured decision aids, as a factor in a more structured audit approach, are designed to focus the auditor on relevant information to improve effectiveness, and to improve audit efficiency, by eliminating the time needed to develop or organize individual approaches to the audit problems.” (sec. 1, “Introduction”) Thus, audit pricing by firms with a structured audit approach is lower, on average, than firms with an intermediate or unstructured audit approach.

Is the observation in the last sentence Myers’s or the author’s? We aren’t sure. So insert a source-reflective statement to avoid confusion.

Myers (1997) reported that “structured decision aids, as a factor in a more structured audit approach, are designed to focus the auditor on relevant information to improve effectiveness, and to improve audit efficiency, by eliminating the time needed to develop or organize individual approaches to the audit problems.” (sec. 1, “Introduction”)  Myers’s observation suggests that  audit pricing by firms with a structured audit approach is lower, on average, than firms with an intermediate or unstructured audit approach.

When and how to use footnotes

You may decide to substitute footnotes for in-text citations and a bibliography. Footnotes are thorough, like entries in the bibliography, and yet specific, like in-text citations. However, depending on the thoroughness of your use of footnotes, you may also need a bibliography.

If you decide to use footnotes, you should follow the format outlined above for the information to include in your entries and should number each footnote separately (1, 2, 3, etc.). You should NOT use the same number twice, even when referencing the same document. Check out guidelines such as those in the  Chicago Manual of Style  or the  MLA Handbook  for more information about how to number your footnote entries.

RefME Logo

How to write a bibliography for websites

Powered by chegg.

  • Select style:
  • Archive material
  • Chapter of an edited book
  • Conference proceedings
  • Dictionary entry
  • Dissertation
  • DVD, video, or film
  • E-book or PDF
  • Edited book
  • Encyclopedia article
  • Government publication
  • Music or recording
  • Online image or video
  • Presentation
  • Press release
  • Religious text

Go back a generation and you’ll find that websites were rarely used as a source for academic essays and papers. Crazy to think about, right? Instead, students relied almost entirely on good old-fashioned paper sources such as textbooks, books and journals.

Of course, now it’s difficult to imagine life without the Internet. And the rise of the smartphone means that we all literally have a world wide web of information at our fingertips, 24/7! This easy-to-access information is super useful for school and life. However, just as with traditional sources, any website you use while researching and writing must be properly referenced. Failure to do this is plagiarism, which, whether accidental or not, can carry strict consequences.

The good news is there’s clear guidance on how you should reference your website sources, depending on which style of citation you’re required to use. APA, MLA and Chicago are three common styles. If you’re unsure which one you should be using, ask your instructor for their preference.

What Information Do I Need?

When researching online, it’s essential that you note the websites you are using as you go—not after when you might forget. It can be very easy to disappear down the Internet rabbit hole and lose track of what information came from where! You could also bookmark important web pages to give yourself an easy online record of your digital sources.

Important note: the Internet contains a wide variety of different types of material that you may need to reference, from articles and blog posts to images and videos. Correctly citing a website will depend on the type of source that you wish to cite. For illustration purposes we’ve used the following article on a website:

  • Author/s name: Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie
  • Article title: The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World
  • Website title: Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology
  • Publication date: 17 April 2018
  • Access date: 9 May 2018
  • Website publisher: Pew Research Center
  • URL: http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/04/17/the-future-of-well-being-in-a-tech-saturated-world/

In-Text Citations

In-text citations may also be included in the body of your work to help the reader identify the section that relates to the full citation on your works cited page. These are also known as parenthetical citations, as they’re often enclosed (like this), and MLA refers to them as citations in prose. The format of your in-text citations will vary depending on the citation style you are using.

Let’s take a look at some examples of how to cite a website in MLA, APA and Chicago styles.

How to Cite a Website in APA Style

APA in text citation : (Anderson & Rainie, 2018)

Full citation:

Anderson, J., & Rainie, L. (2018). The future of well-being in a tech-saturated world. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/04/17/the-future-of-well-being-in-a-tech-saturated-world/ .

How to Cite a Website in MLA Style

MLA in-text citation: (Anderson and Rainie)

Anderson, Janna, and Lee Rainie. “The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World.” Pew Internet, 17 Apr. 2018, www.pewinternet.org/2018/04/17/ the-future-of-well-being-in-a-tech-saturated-world/.

How to Cite a Book in Chicago Style Format (footnote/bibliography style)

Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie, “The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World,” Pew Internet , April 17, 2018, accessed May 9, 2018, http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/04/17/the-future-of-well-being-in-a-tech-saturated-world/.

Bibliography:

Anderson, Janna, and Lee Rainie. “The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World.” Pew Internet , April 17, 2018. Accessed May 9, 2018. http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/04/17/the-future-of-well-being-in-a-tech-saturated-world/.

Don’t disappear down the Internet rabbit hole! Make a note of all the websites you use during your research and use the handy online tool at Cite This For Me to create quick and easy website citations.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

APA Formatting and Style Guide (7th Edition)

OWL logo

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

In-Text Citations

Resources on using in-text citations in APA style

Reference List

Resources on writing an APA style reference list, including citation formats

Other APA Resources

  • PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
  • EDIT Edit this Article
  • EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
  • Browse Articles
  • Learn Something New
  • Quizzes Hot
  • This Or That Game New
  • Train Your Brain
  • Explore More
  • Support wikiHow
  • About wikiHow
  • Log in / Sign up
  • Education and Communications
  • College University and Postgraduate
  • Academic Writing

How to Write a Bibliography

Last Updated: September 14, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Diane Stubbs . Diane Stubbs is a Secondary English Teacher with over 22 years of experience teaching all high school grade levels and AP courses. She specializes in secondary education, classroom management, and educational technology. Diane earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Delaware and a Master of Education from Wesley College. There are 15 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 646,532 times.

When you write a paper or a book, it's important to include a bibliography. A bibliography tells your reader what sources you've used. It lists all the books, articles, and other references you cited in or used to inform your work. Bibliographies are typically formatted according to one of three styles: American Psychological Association (APA) for scientific papers, Modern Language Association (MLA) for humanities papers, and Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) for the social sciences. Make sure you always check with your superior - whether a professor or boss - about which style they prefer.

Sample Bibliographies

how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

Writing an APA Bibliography

Step 1 Create a reference list.

  • For example, if the author's name for a source is "John Adams Smith," you would list him as "Smith, J.A.," before listing the title of his piece.

Step 3 Use ellipses if there are more than seven authors.

  • For example, if one source has twelve authors, and the seventh author is "Smith, J.A." and the twelfth is "Timothy, S.J.," you would list the first six authors, then write "Smith, J.A. ...Timothy, S.J."

Step 4 List sources by the same author is chronological order.

  • For example, if you have a World Health Organization Report without an author as one of your sources, you would write, "World Health Organization, "Report on Development Strategies in Developing Nations," July 1996."

Step 6 Indent each line after the first line of each source.

  • For example, an article citation might look like this: Jensen, O. E. (2012). "African Elephants." Savannah Quarterly , 2(1), 88.
  • If the periodical the article comes from always begins with page number 1 (these types of periodicals are called “paginated by issue” periodicals, you should include the full page range of the article.
  • If the article was retrieved online, end the citation with the words "Retrieved from" followed by the web address.

Step 8 Cite books.

  • Example: Worden, B. L. (1999). Echoing Eden. New York, New York: One Two Press.
  • If the title is more than one word long and doesn’t contain any proper nouns, only the first word should be capitalized. Only the first letter of any subtitle should be capitalized as well.

Step 9 [9]...

  • For example, a cited website might look like this: Quarry, R. R. (May 23, 2010). Wild Skies. Retrieved from http://wildskies.com.
  • If no author is available, just start with the title. If no date is available, write "n.d."

Step 10 Check a reliable source for other citation rules.

Writing a MLA Bibliography

Step 1 Create a works cited page.

  • You shouldn’t use an author’s title or degrees when listing their names in your bibliography. This is true even if they are listed that way on the source.

Step 6 Cite books.

  • For example, a book citation might look like this: Butler, Olivia. Parable of the Flower. Sacramento: Seed Press, 1996.

Step 7 Cite articles.

  • For example, an article published in a scholarly journal might look like this: Green, Marsha. "Life in Costa Rica." Science Magazine vol. 1, no. 4, Mar 2013: 1-2.
  • If you’re citing an article in a newspaper, you only need the name of the newspaper, followed by the date it was published, and the page number. A citation for that might look like this: Smith, Jennifer. “Tiny Tim Wins Award.” New York Times, 24 Dec 2017, p. A7.

Step 8 Cite websites.

  • For example, a website citation might look like this: Jong, June. "How to Write an Essay." Writing Portal. 2 Aug. 2012. University of California. 23 Feb. 2013. <http://writingportal.com>
  • Some websites, particularly academic ones, will have what’s called a DOI (digital object identifier). Write “doi:” in front of this number in place of the website’s url if a DOI is available.

Step 9 Use reliable sources to look for the citations rules for other types of sources.

Writing a CMS Bibliography

Step 1 Create a bibliography page.

  • Example: Skylar Marsh. "Walking on Water." Earth Magazine 4(2001): 23.

Step 6 Cite books.

  • For example, a book entry might look like this: Walter White. Space and Time . New York: London Press, 1982

Step 7 Cite websites.

  • Example: University of California. "History of University of California." Last modified April 3, 2013. http://universityofcalifornia.com.
  • Unless there is a publication date for the website you’re citing, you don’t need to include an access date. If you do have an access date, it goes at the end of the citation.

Expert Q&A

Diane Stubbs

  • Ask your teacher or professor which style they prefer you to use in your paper. Thanks Helpful 6 Not Helpful 2
  • Be sure to include each and every source you reference in your work. Thanks Helpful 7 Not Helpful 5
  • When writing a bibliography or a reference page, it really comes down to looking at an example and applying it to your own information. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

You Might Also Like

Write an APA Style References Page

  • ↑ https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/citing-references/compilingbibliography
  • ↑ https://morningside.libguides.com/APA7/references
  • ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/
  • ↑ https://libraryguides.vu.edu.au/harvard/sample-reference-list
  • ↑ Cite articles
  • ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/08/
  • ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/
  • ↑ https://www.scribbr.com/mla/works-cited/
  • ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/05/
  • ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_page_basic_format.html
  • ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/
  • ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/07/
  • ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/02/
  • ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/03/
  • ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/05/

About This Article

Diane Stubbs

To create an APA bibliography, title a separate page at the end of your paper "References." Then, use the authors' last names to organize your list alphabetically, for example by writing the author John Adam Smith as "Smith, J. A." If a source has more than 7 authors, list the first 7 before adding an ellipses. To cite an article, include the author's name, year of publication, article title, publication title, and page numbers. When citing a book, begin with the author's name, then the date of publication, title in Italics, location of the publisher, and publisher's name. For tips on how to write an MLA or CMS bibliography, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

  • Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

Alana D.

Dec 9, 2023

Did this article help you?

Alana D.

Mar 11, 2023

Simon ____

Mar 12, 2020

Braden White

Braden White

Oct 21, 2020

Anonymous

Oct 12, 2017

Am I a Narcissist or an Empath Quiz

Featured Articles

Study Efficiently

Trending Articles

How to Take the Perfect Thirst Trap

Watch Articles

Wrap a Round Gift

  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Info
  • Not Selling Info

wikiHow Tech Help Pro:

Develop the tech skills you need for work and life

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

  • Knowledge Base
  • Citing sources
  • How to Cite a Journal Article | APA, MLA, & Chicago Examples

How to Cite a Journal Article | APA, MLA, & Chicago Examples

Published on March 9, 2021 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on January 17, 2024.

To cite an article from an academic journal, you need an in-text citation and a corresponding reference listing the name(s) of the author(s), the publication date, the article title and journal name, the volume and issue numbers, the page range, and the URL or DOI .

Different citation styles present this information differently. The main citation styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago style .

You can use the interactive example generator to explore the format for APA and MLA journal article citations.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

upload-your-document-ai-proofreader

Table of contents

Citing an article in apa style, citing an article in mla style, citing an article in chicago style, frequently asked questions about citations.

In an APA Style journal article reference , the article title is in plain text and sentence case, while the journal name appears in italics, in title case.

The in-text citation lists up to two authors; for three or more, use “ et al. ”

When citing a journal article in print or from a database, don’t include a URL. You can still include the DOI if available.

You can also cite a journal article using our free APA Citation Generator . Search by title or DOI to automatically generate a correct citation.

Generate accurate APA citations with Scribbr

The only proofreading tool specialized in correcting academic writing - try for free.

The academic proofreading tool has been trained on 1000s of academic texts and by native English editors. Making it the most accurate and reliable proofreading tool for students.

how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

Try for free

In an MLA Works Cited entry for a journal article , the article title appears in quotation marks, the name of the journal in italics—both in title case.

List up to two authors in both the in-text citation and the Works Cited entry. For three or more, use “et al.”

A DOI is always included when available; a URL appears if no DOI is available but the article was accessed online . If you accessed the article in print and no DOI is available, you can omit this part.

You can also use our free MLA Citation Generator to create your journal article citations.

Generate accurate MLA citations with Scribbr

In Chicago notes and bibliography style, you include a bibliography entry for each source, and cite them in the text using footnotes .

A bibliography entry for a journal article lists the title of the article in quotation marks and the journal name in italics—both in title case. List up to 10 authors in full; use “et al.” for 11 or more.

In the footnote, use “et al.” for four or more authors.

A DOI or URL (preferably a DOI) is included for articles consulted online; for articles consulted in print, omit this part.

Chicago also offers an alternative author-date style of citation. Examples of how to cite journal articles in this style can be found here .

The elements included in journal article citations across APA , MLA , and Chicago style are the name(s) of the author(s), the title of the article, the year of publication, the name of the journal, the volume and issue numbers, the page range of the article, and, when accessed online, the DOI or URL.

In MLA and Chicago style, you also include the specific month or season of publication alongside the year, when this information is available.

The DOI is usually clearly visible when you open a journal article on an academic database. It is often listed near the publication date, and includes “doi.org” or “DOI:”. If the database has a “cite this article” button, this should also produce a citation with the DOI included.

If you can’t find the DOI, you can search on Crossref using information like the author, the article title, and the journal name.

The abbreviation “ et al. ” (Latin for “and others”) is used to shorten citations of sources with multiple authors.

“Et al.” is used in APA in-text citations of sources with 3+ authors, e.g. (Smith et al., 2019). It is not used in APA reference entries .

Use “et al.” for 3+ authors in MLA in-text citations and Works Cited entries.

Use “et al.” for 4+ authors in a Chicago in-text citation , and for 10+ authors in a Chicago bibliography entry.

Check if your university or course guidelines specify which citation style to use. If the choice is left up to you, consider which style is most commonly used in your field.

  • APA Style is the most popular citation style, widely used in the social and behavioral sciences.
  • MLA style is the second most popular, used mainly in the humanities.
  • Chicago notes and bibliography style is also popular in the humanities, especially history.
  • Chicago author-date style tends to be used in the sciences.

Other more specialized styles exist for certain fields, such as Bluebook and OSCOLA for law.

The most important thing is to choose one style and use it consistently throughout your text.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2024, January 17). How to Cite a Journal Article | APA, MLA, & Chicago Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved February 19, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/citing-sources/cite-a-journal-article/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, how to cite a book | apa, mla, & chicago examples, how to cite a website | mla, apa & chicago examples, how to cite a wikipedia article | apa, mla & chicago, scribbr apa citation checker.

An innovative new tool that checks your APA citations with AI software. Say goodbye to inaccurate citations!

how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

IMAGES

  1. ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY : INTERNET SOURCES Fields, A

    how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

  2. How to write an annotated bibliography step-by-step with examples

    how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

  3. 😱 How to do an annotated bibliography for websites. 3 Ways to Write an

    how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

  4. How to Write a Bibliography for Internet Sources

    how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

  5. How to write an annotated bibliography step-by-step with examples

    how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

  6. How to Write a Bibliography, With Examples 2024

    how do you write a bibliography for an internet source

VIDEO

  1. How to write bibliography for a school project or Research paper

  2. bibliography 😊😊

  3. how to write bibliography for project file for icse+cbse students IX,X,XI,XII

  4. Citation & Bibliography Tools

  5. How to write bibliography

  6. How to write Bibliography

COMMENTS

  1. How to Cite a Website

    To cite a page from a website, you need a short in-text citation and a corresponding reference stating the author's name, the date of publication, the title of the page, the website name, and the URL. This information is presented differently in different citation styles. APA, MLA, and Chicago are the most commonly used styles.

  2. How to Write a Bibliography, With Examples

    Give your paper extra polish Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly What is the purpose of a bibliography? A bibliography is the list of sources a work's author used to create the work. It accompanies just about every type of academic writing, like essays, research papers, and reports.

  3. How to Cite a Website in APA Style

    APA website citations usually include the author, the publication date, the title of the page or article, the website name, and the URL. If there is no author, start the citation with the title of the article. If the page is likely to change over time, add a retrieval date.

  4. 3 Ways to Add a Website to a Bibliography

    Method 1 MLA Download Article 1 Start your Works Cited entry with the author's name if known. If the author of the website is an individual, list their last name first, followed by a comma, then their first name. For institutional authors, list the full name of the organization. [1] Individual author example: Lovegood, Luna.

  5. How to Cite a Website in MLA

    Write the author's name in last name, first name format with a period following. Next, write the name of the website in italics. Write the contributing organization's name with a comma following. List the date in day, month, year format with a comma following. Lastly, write the URL with a period following.

  6. Citing Internet Sources

    Knowing more about the author helps readers to assess the source and also, sometimes, to find the source when the website has been moved or revised. The general form of a citation from an Internet source is: Author's name. Title of Document. Title of Website. Sponsor of Website. Date of Document. Date of Access.

  7. How to Cite an Online Work

    How to Cite an Online Work. To create a basic works-cited-list entry for an online work, list the author, the title of the work, the title of the website as the title of the container, and the publication details. You may need to include other elements depending on the type of work (e.g., book, scholarly article, blog post) and how you accessed ...

  8. Bibliography

    For bibliography entries, you list the sources alphabetically by last name, so you will list the last name of the author or creator first in each entry. You should single-space within a bibliography entry and double-space between them. When an entry goes longer than one line, use a hanging indent of .5 inches for subsequent lines.

  9. LibGuides: APA Citation Guide: Internet Resources Examples

    APA Citation Guide Webpages / Web Documents Template Author, A. A. (Year). Title of page. Website. http://xxxxx General copyright dates are not sufficient to use as the publication date. If no creation or publication date is given, use n.d. If the author and website are the same, omit the website. Example 1: Author, No Date Corcodilos, N. (n.d.).

  10. How to Write a Bibliography in APA and MLA styles With Examples

    To cite a source, simply put the author's name and the date of the publication in parentheses (Author, date) in your text. If the person reading your report wants to find the information and read more about it, they can look up the reference in your bibliography for more detail about the source.

  11. How to Cite a Website and Online/Electronic Resources

    Harvard referencing The pages outlines examples of how to cite websites and media sources using the Harvard Referencing method. What are electronic sources? An electronic source is any information source in digital format. The library subscribes to many electronic information resources in order to provide access for students.

  12. MLA Works Cited: Electronic Sources (Web Publications)

    Note: The MLA considers the term "e-book" to refer to publications formatted specifically for reading with an e-book reader device (e.g., a Kindle) or a corresponding web application.These e-books will not have URLs or DOIs. If you are citing book content from an ordinary webpage with a URL, use the "A Page on a Web Site" format above.

  13. How to Cite Sources

    Simply enter the URL, DOI, or title, and we'll generate an accurate, correctly formatted citation. Generate accurate citations with Scribbr Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text Be assured that you'll submit flawless writing. Upload your document to correct all your mistakes. Table of contents When do you need to cite sources?

  14. How to Cite Sources

    Here is a complete list for how to cite sources. Most of these guides present citation guidance and examples in MLA, APA, and Chicago. If you're looking for general information on MLA or APA citations, the EasyBib Writing Center was designed for you!

  15. How to Cite a Website

    author's given name, preceded by a comma. For a page with two or more authors, list them in the order they appear on the website. Only the first author's name should be reversed, while the others are written in normal order. Separate author names by a comma, and place the word "and" before the last author's name.

  16. Internet References

    This page contains links and short descriptions of writing resources including dictionaries, style manuals, grammar handbooks, and editing resources. It also contains a list of online reference sites, indexes for writers, online libraries, books and e-texts, as well as links to newspapers, news services, journals, and online magazines.

  17. Harvard Style Bibliography

    Reference list or bibliography entries always start with the author's last name and initial, the publication date and the title of the source. The other information required varies depending on the source type. Formats and examples for the most common source types are given below. Books Entire book

  18. How to write a bibliography

    Books are the bibliography format with which you're probably most familiar. Books follow this pattern: Author Last Name, Author First Name. (Publication Year) Title. Publisher's City: Publisher. Page numbers. Alexander, Carol. (2001) Market Models: A Guide to Financial Data Analysis.

  19. How to Cite a Website

    How to write a bibliography for websites Go back a generation and you'll find that websites were rarely used as a source for academic essays and papers. Crazy to think about, right? Instead, students relied almost entirely on good old-fashioned paper sources such as textbooks, books and journals.

  20. APA Formatting and Style Guide (7th Edition)

    Reference List. Resources on writing an APA style reference list, including citation formats. Basic Rules Basic guidelines for formatting the reference list at the end of a standard APA research paper Author/Authors Rules for handling works by a single author or multiple authors that apply to all APA-style references in your reference list ...

  21. 4 Ways to Write a Bibliography

    Method 1 Writing an APA Bibliography Download Article 1 Create a reference list. Reserve a page at the end of the paper for the bibliography. Title it "References." Under this heading, you'll list everything you've used in the paper. [1] 2 Sort all of your references alphabetically by last name.

  22. How to Cite a Website in Chicago Style

    2. Bryson, "Word Order Rules.". When both are available and you think it's important for the reader to know, you can include both the original publication date and the revision date. Chicago bibliography. Author last name, first name. " Page Title .". Website Name. Month Day, Year. Last modified Month Day, Year. URL.

  23. What records are exempted from FERPA?

    Records which are kept in the sole possession of the maker of the records, are used only as a personal memory aid, and are not accessible or revealed to any other person except a temporary substitute for the maker of the records.

  24. How to Cite a Journal Article

    To cite an article from an academic journal, you need an in-text citation and a corresponding reference listing the name (s) of the author (s), the publication date, the article title and journal name, the volume and issue numbers, the page range, and the URL or DOI. Different citation styles present this information differently.