Every citation has two halves: the full entry in your reference list, and the short marker inside the sentence that points to it. Students usually get the reference list right and the in-text marker wrong, because the rules differ by style in small ways that are easy to miss.
Enter the author, year and page and this tool produces the marker for your style, alongside worked parenthetical and narrative examples showing where it sits in a real sentence.
A parenthetical citation puts everything in brackets at the end of the sentence: spaced practice improves retention (Smith, 2020). A narrative citation makes the author part of your sentence: Smith (2020) found that spaced practice improves retention.
Both are correct, and good academic writing alternates between them. Narrative citations foreground who made a claim, which matters when you are comparing positions; parenthetical citations keep the focus on the finding. A page of nothing but parenthetical citations reads as a list of facts with no argument.
APA and Harvard use author and date: (Smith, 2020). MLA uses author and page with no year: (Smith 45). Chicago's author-date form resembles APA, while its notes form uses a superscript number pointing to a footnote instead.
IEEE and Vancouver do not cite by author at all. The marker is the reference number assigned by your list — [1] for the first source you cite, reused every time you return to it. Alphabetising a numbered reference list breaks every marker in the document.
Two authors: APA uses an ampersand inside brackets (Smith & Doe, 2020) and "and" in narrative form — Smith and Doe (2020) found. MLA uses (Smith and Doe 45). Harvard uses "and" throughout.
Three or more authors are shortened to the first surname plus et al. from the very first citation in current APA and MLA — the older rule of listing all authors once before shortening no longer applies. Note that "et al." takes a full stop on the "al", because it abbreviates et alia.
Always give a page number for a direct quotation. For paraphrase, APA recommends one and many departments require it — it helps a reader find what you used, so include it when you can.
With no author, the title takes the author position. With no date, use n.d. — never the date you accessed the page, which is a separate field. And the marker belongs inside the sentence's punctuation: the full stop comes after the closing bracket, not before it.
The in-text citation is the short marker inside your sentence. The reference list entry is the full source detail at the end. Every marker needs a matching entry, and every entry needs at least one marker.
For three or more authors, from the first citation onwards in current APA and MLA. Use the first author's surname followed by et al.
Always for direct quotes. For paraphrase, APA recommends one and many departments require it — include it where you can.
Use the title in the author position, shortened if it is long. Do not write "Anonymous" unless the source actually credits an author of that name.
IEEE and Vancouver cite by reference number rather than author and date. The marker is [1], [2], and so on, assigned in the order you first cite each source.