Citing an article requires four core pieces of information: the author’s name, the article title, the publication name, and the date it was published. How you arrange and format those pieces depends on which citation style your instructor or publisher requires. The three most common styles are APA, MLA, and Chicago, and each has its own rules for punctuation, capitalization, and the order of elements.
What You Need Before You Start
Before formatting anything, gather the key details from the article itself. For a journal article, you’ll need the author name(s), article title, journal name, volume number, issue number, page range, and publication year. For a magazine or newspaper article, you’ll need the author, article title, publication name, and the full date (day, month, and year when available). If the article is online, look for a DOI, which is a permanent identification number usually printed near the article’s header or on the database landing page. If there’s no DOI, copy the URL instead.
Citing an Article in APA Style
APA style is standard in psychology, education, nursing, and the social sciences. It emphasizes the publication date because these fields value recency of research.
A basic journal article reference in APA looks like this:
Garcia, R. T., & Patel, S. (2023). Effects of sleep duration on working memory. Journal of Cognitive Research, 41(2), 112–130. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx
Key formatting rules to follow:
- Author names: List the surname first, then abbreviate first names to initials. Use an ampersand (&) before the final author. APA allows up to 20 authors in a single reference before abbreviating.
- Date: Place the year in parentheses right after the author names. The date also appears in every in-text citation.
- Article title: Use sentence case, meaning only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns are capitalized. Do not put the title in quotation marks.
- Journal name and volume: Italicize the journal name and the volume number. Put the issue number in parentheses, not italicized.
- DOI or URL: Include a DOI for every work that has one, even if you read the print version. If a work has both a DOI and a URL, include only the DOI. If there’s no DOI and you found the article on a website (not a standard academic database), include the URL.
For an in-text citation, APA uses the author-date format: (Garcia & Patel, 2023). If you mention the authors in your sentence, put just the year in parentheses: Garcia and Patel (2023) found that…
Citing an Article in MLA Style
MLA style is the default in English, literature, communications, and the humanities. It focuses on authorship and page numbers rather than dates.
A journal article in MLA looks like this:
Garcia, Rosa T., and Sanjay Patel. “Effects of Sleep Duration on Working Memory.” Journal of Cognitive Research, vol. 41, no. 2, 2023, pp. 112–30.
The differences from APA are significant:
- Author names: Spell out full first names. Only the first author’s name is reversed (last name first). If there are two authors, the second author’s name appears in normal order, connected by “and.” With three or more authors, list only the first author followed by “et al.”
- Article title: Use title case (capitalize most words) and enclose the title in quotation marks.
- Journal name: Italicize the journal name, then list the volume, issue, year, and page range with commas separating each element.
- Date in text: MLA in-text citations do not typically include the year. Instead, use the author’s last name and the page number: (Garcia and Patel 118).
Citing a Magazine or Newspaper Article
Magazine and newspaper articles follow slightly different rules than journal articles because they use specific calendar dates instead of volume and issue numbers.
In MLA, a magazine article looks like this:
Kolbert, Elizabeth. “The Climate of Man.” The New Yorker, 25 Apr. 2005, pp. 56–71.
List the author, article title in quotation marks, italicized publication name, then the day, abbreviated month, and year, followed by page numbers. For newspaper articles, the format is nearly identical. If the newspaper is a smaller or local publication, include the city name in brackets after the title so readers can identify it.
In APA, the structure stays consistent with journal articles, but you replace the volume and issue with the full date:
Kolbert, E. (2005, April 25). The climate of man. The New Yorker, 56–71.
What to Do When Information Is Missing
Online articles in particular often lack an author name, a publication date, or both. Each style has specific rules for handling these gaps.
No Author
In APA, move the article title to the beginning of the reference, taking the spot where the author name would normally go. Do not write “Anonymous” unless the article is literally signed that way. Your in-text citation uses a shortened version of the title and the year: (“Effects of Sleep,” 2023). In MLA, the same principle applies: start the works cited entry with the article title.
No Date
In APA, use “n.d.” (short for “no date”) in place of the year, both in the reference list and in parenthetical citations: (Garcia, n.d.). In MLA, simply omit the date from the works cited entry entirely.
No Author and No Date
In APA, combine both fixes: start with the title and use “n.d.” for the date. The reference entry follows this pattern: Title. (n.d.). Source. The in-text citation becomes: (“Shortened Title,” n.d.).
Formatting DOIs and URLs
If the article has a DOI, include it as a full URL: https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx. A DOI is preferable to a URL because it never changes, even if the website restructures. When an article has both a DOI and a regular URL, use only the DOI.
For articles found online without a DOI, include the URL only if you accessed it on a website rather than through a library database like JSTOR or EBSCOhost. The reasoning is that database URLs are often temporary or require login credentials, so they won’t work for your reader. If you read a print article that has no DOI, leave the link out entirely.
In-Text Citations at a Glance
The biggest practical difference between APA and MLA shows up in your sentences, not on your reference page. APA in-text citations pair the author’s last name with the year: (Garcia & Patel, 2023). MLA in-text citations pair the author’s last name with a page number: (Garcia and Patel 118). Note that MLA uses “and” while APA uses an ampersand, and MLA does not place a comma before the page number.
If you’re writing a paper and aren’t sure which style to use, check your assignment guidelines or ask your instructor. Using the wrong style won’t change the substance of your work, but it will cost you points on formatting. Whichever style you choose, apply it consistently across every citation in your paper.