Single-citation tools format one source at a time and leave you to assemble the list — which is where the remaining marks are usually lost. A reference list has its own rules: which order the entries go in, whether they are numbered, and how they are laid out on the page.
Add each of your sources here and the whole list is built at once, ordered the way your style requires: alphabetically by author for APA, MLA, Harvard and Chicago, and numbered in citation order for IEEE and Vancouver. Switch styles and the list reorders itself.
APA, MLA, Harvard and Chicago order the list alphabetically by the first author's surname. The position of an entry has nothing to do with where it appears in your text, which is why these styles cite by author and date in the body.
IEEE and Vancouver number entries in the order they are first cited. The list is therefore in citation order, and the number is the citation: [4] in your text means the fourth source you introduced. Alphabetising a numbered list breaks every in-text citation in the document, which is why this tool preserves your entry order for those styles.
The words are not interchangeable. APA and Harvard use "References" and include only sources you cited. MLA uses "Works Cited", also cited-only. Vancouver and IEEE use "References".
"Bibliography" traditionally means everything you consulted, cited or not, and Chicago uses it in that broader sense. Check what your department asks for: a bibliography padded with unread sources is a common and easily spotted problem, while a reference list missing a source you cited is a more serious one.
Most styles want a hanging indent: the first line of each entry flush left, subsequent lines indented. This is a paragraph setting in your word processor — in Word, Paragraph → Indentation → Special → Hanging — not something you should create with the space bar or tab key, which breaks as soon as the text reflows.
Double-space the list in APA and MLA. Keep the entries in one continuous list with no bullets or numbers in the alphabetised styles; the numbered styles use square-bracketed numerals as shown here.
Alphabetise letter by letter on the surname, ignoring "A", "An" and "The" when a title takes the author position. Where the same author has several works, order them by year, earliest first. Where the same author has several works in the same year, add lowercase letters — 2020a, 2020b — and use those letters in your in-text citations too.
An organisation as author alphabetises under its full name, not its abbreviation: the World Health Organization sits under W, even if you cite it as WHO in the text. Names with prefixes such as "van" or "de" follow the convention of the author's own country, so check how the author publishes.
Every in-text citation must have an entry in the list, and every entry must be cited at least once in the text. Read through your document and tick off each citation against the list — this catches sources you cut during editing but left in the bibliography, and sources you added late and never listed.
Then check the details: the year in the text must match the year in the entry, and surnames must be spelled identically in both places. Mismatches between text and list are among the easiest errors for a marker to spot and among the quickest for you to fix.
For APA, MLA, Harvard and Chicago, yes — entries are sorted by the first author's surname. For IEEE and Vancouver the list stays in the order you added sources, because those styles number references in citation order.
A reference list contains only the sources you cited. A bibliography traditionally includes everything you consulted. Chicago uses the broader sense; APA, MLA, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver expect cited sources only.
Set it in your word processor: in Word, Paragraph → Indentation → Special → Hanging. Do not build one with spaces or tabs, as it breaks when the text reflows.
Earliest year first. If both are from the same year, add lowercase letters after the year — 2020a, 2020b — and use the same letters in your in-text citations.
Yes. Changing the style reformats every entry and reorders the list according to that style's rules, so nothing needs re-entering.