The Complete List of Citation Styles and When to Use Each

There are thousands of citation styles, but most students only ever meet a dozen or so. They fall into four families: author-date, author-page, numeric and note styles.

This list covers the styles you are most likely to need, grouped by family, with the fields that use each one, what a citation looks like and the current edition where one applies.

How Many Citation Styles Are There?

Reference managers ship with thousands of style files, because many journals and publishers keep their own house variants. Most are small adjustments to a handful of major styles.

For coursework, you need to know only the style your course specifies, and ideally the family it belongs to. Once you understand one style in a family, others in the same family are easy to learn, because they share the same logic and differ mainly in punctuation.

Author-Date Styles

Author-date styles show who wrote a source and when, right in the sentence. They suit fields where the age of research matters.

The reference list in each is alphabetical by author. Differences between them are mostly in punctuation, capitalization and how authors are listed.

Author-date styles are also the easiest to edit. Adding or removing a source does not change any other citation, unlike numeric styles where numbers can shift.

Author-Page Style: MLA

MLA gives the author and the page number with no year in the citation, because literary scholars care about where a passage appears more than when it was published.

MLA is now in its 9th edition (2021). It uses a set of core elements, such as author, title, container and publisher, so you can cite almost any source by filling in the elements that apply.

Numeric Styles

Numeric styles replace the author's name with a number that points to a numbered list. They keep dense technical and medical writing readable.

In most numeric styles, the reference list is ordered by number, not alphabetically. CSE's citation-name system is the exception: it numbers an alphabetical list.

Vancouver and AMA also shorten author lists in a fixed way and abbreviate journal names using standard lists. Those small rules are where most marks are lost, so keep the official guide close when you build a numeric list.

Note Styles

Note styles put citations in footnotes or endnotes, leaving room for commentary alongside sources. History, law and the humanities favor them.

One Journal Article in Six Styles

Seeing a single source in several styles shows how much, and how little, changes. The article below is invented: two authors, 2021, volume 13, issue 2, pages 211 to 236.

The same six facts appear every time: authors, year, article title, journal, volume and issue, and pages. What changes is the order, the punctuation, whether names are shortened and how titles are marked.

That is good news. If you collect complete details for every source as you research, you can produce any style accurately, by hand or with a reference manager.

Other Styles You May Meet

• AAA: anthropology, an author-date style.
• Linguistic Society of America: linguistics, author-date.
• SBL: biblical studies, a note style based on Chicago.
• NLM: the US National Library of Medicine's rules, which underpin Vancouver.
• AGLC: Australian legal citation, a note style.
• Journal house styles: variants of the major styles set by individual journals.

If your course names a style not listed here, ask for the official guide or a sample paper. Most follow one of the four families, so the logic will be familiar.

Which Style Should You Use?

Use the style your assignment, handbook or department specifies. If none is given, ask your tutor; only fall back on your field's usual style if no guidance exists.

Our free citation generator supports the major styles in this list, with auto-fill from a DOI, ISBN or URL. Check each result against your edition.

Tips for Working in Any Style

• Note the edition as well as the style; APA 6 and APA 7 differ in many details.
• Collect full source details as you research, including DOIs and page numbers.
• Use a reference manager for long papers, and check its output.
• Never mix styles within one paper.
• Keep a sample paper or official guide open while you write.

Above all, aim for consistency. A marker forgives a debatable choice applied the same way throughout far more readily than a paper where every third reference follows a different pattern.

When a source does not fit any example in your guide, build the citation from its core elements: who, when, what and where. Then apply your style's punctuation to those elements.

How Bibloq Helps with Citation Styles

Send your paper and tell us the style and edition. An editor formats every in-text citation, note and reference to that style, converts entries from other styles and checks that text and list match.

You get a clean copy and a tracked version. Free revisions are included within the scope of your original request.