To cite a website in the text of your paper, you place a short reference in parentheses or work it into your sentence, pointing the reader to the full entry on your references or works cited page. The exact format depends on whether you’re using APA, MLA, or Chicago style, but every approach follows the same logic: give the reader just enough information (usually an author name and a date or title) to find the complete source at the end of your paper.
APA Style: Author and Date
APA uses an author-date system. When you reference information from a website, you include the author’s last name and the year the page was published or last updated. You can do this two ways.
A parenthetical citation puts everything in parentheses at the end of the sentence, before the period:
- Stress levels among college students have risen sharply in the past decade (Bologna, 2019).
A narrative citation weaves the author’s name into the sentence itself, with only the year in parentheses:
- Bologna (2019) reported that stress levels among college students have risen sharply.
When the author is an organization rather than a person, use the full organization name. For example: (World Health Organization, 2018) or National Institute of Mental Health (2018). There’s no need to abbreviate the organization name in most cases.
When the Date or Author Is Missing
Websites don’t always list an author or a publication date. APA has simple fixes for both situations.
If there’s no date, replace the year with “n.d.” (short for “no date”): (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.).
If there’s no author, move the title of the webpage into the author position. Use the title (or a shortened version of it) in your in-text citation: (“Mental Health Basics,” 2021). Do not write “Anonymous” unless the source itself is literally signed “Anonymous.”
If both the author and the date are missing, combine the two rules: (“Mental Health Basics,” n.d.).
Pinpointing a Specific Passage
Web pages don’t have page numbers, which creates a problem when you’re quoting someone’s exact words. APA asks you to point the reader to the quoted passage using whatever location marker works best:
- A heading or section name: (Gecht-Silver & Duncombe, 2015, Osteoarthritis section)
- A paragraph number (count them yourself if they aren’t numbered): (Chamberlin, 2014, para. 1)
- A heading plus paragraph number: (DeAngelis, 2018, Musical Forays section, para. 4)
- A timestamp for videos or audio: (Cuddy, 2012, 2:12)
You only need these location markers when you’re directly quoting. For paraphrasing, the author and date alone are sufficient.
MLA Style: Author and Title
MLA doesn’t use dates in its in-text citations. Instead, you typically give the author’s last name. Because web sources rarely have page numbers, the parenthetical citation is often just the name by itself.
If the website article has a named author:
- Parenthetical: Online learning enrollment grew by 15% that year (Smith).
- Signal phrase: Smith notes that online learning enrollment grew by 15% that year.
If there’s no author, use the first item that appears in your Works Cited entry for that source, which is usually the title of the article or page. In a parenthetical citation, shorten a long title to its first few key words and put it in quotation marks: (“MLA Formatting”). If you name the full title in your sentence, no parenthetical citation is needed at all.
Two important rules for MLA web citations: do not make up page numbers based on your browser’s print preview, and do not add paragraph numbers unless the source itself numbers them. Also avoid including full URLs in the text of your paper. If the site’s name is relevant, a domain name like CNN.com or Forbes.com is fine, but skip the full web address.
Chicago Style: Two Systems
Chicago offers two citation systems, and which one you use usually depends on your discipline or your instructor’s preference.
The author-date system works almost identically to APA. You put the author’s last name and the publication year in parentheses: (Roberts, 2020). This pairs with a reference list at the end of your paper. It’s common in the sciences and social sciences.
The notes-bibliography system uses footnotes or endnotes instead of parenthetical citations. Each time you cite a source, you place a superscript number in the text (like this¹), and the corresponding footnote at the bottom of the page contains the source details. A bibliography at the end of the paper lists all sources. This system is more common in the humanities, particularly history.
If your instructor simply says “use Chicago style,” ask which system they want. The two formats look very different on the page.
Choosing the Right Format
Your citation style is almost always determined by your class, your instructor, or your field. English and humanities courses typically require MLA. Psychology, education, nursing, and most social sciences use APA. History and some humanities programs prefer Chicago. Check your assignment guidelines before you start writing, because switching styles after the fact means reformatting every citation in the paper.
Regardless of which style you use, the in-text citation is only half the job. Every source you cite in the text needs a matching full entry on your references page (APA), works cited page (MLA), or bibliography (Chicago). The in-text citation is the shortcut; the end-of-paper entry gives readers everything they need to find your source themselves.
Quick Reference Table
- APA with author: (Last Name, Year) or Last Name (Year)
- APA without author: (“Shortened Title,” Year)
- APA without date: (Last Name, n.d.)
- MLA with author: (Last Name) or use name in sentence
- MLA without author: (“Shortened Title”) or use title in sentence
- Chicago author-date: (Last Name, Year)
- Chicago notes-bibliography: Superscript number linked to a footnote