How to Cite a Source with No Date

How to Cite a Source with No Date: Quick Answer

Find a publication, update, revision, or—in MLA—copyright date that belongs to this page before you treat the work as undated. After that search fails, APA 7 writes (n.d.) in the reference and the in-text citation, MLA 9 omits the date element and usually adds an access date, and Chicago 18 adds an access date or a Wayback Machine URL. Chicago author-date also puts lowercase n.d. in the year slot.

Find a date before you write n.d.

Students reach for n.d. too early. A missing byline date is not the same as a source with no recoverable date. APA, MLA, and Chicago each treat "no date" as a last resort, and they do not agree on which leftover clues count. Recover the best date you can; only then apply the style-specific marker.

The APA Style page on missing reference information is blunt: for a work with no date, write "n.d." in both the reference and the in-text citation. The MLA Style Center says the opposite for the works-cited list: omit the publication-date element. The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition, §14.104, uses n.d. in author-date and then asks for an access date or a Wayback URL. Those three answers are easy to mix up if you only remember "put n.d. in the year slot."

1. Scan the page for a byline date, "published," "posted," "updated," "last modified," or "effective" line that belongs to this page, not the whole site.
2. Check the URL. Many news and government paths embed 2023/12/13 or a similar stamp.
3. Open the page source or the browser's document info and look for datePublished, dateModified, or a comparable meta tag.
4. Decide whether a copyright line is a publication date. APA usually says no for website footers; MLA often says yes. See the comparison below.
5. If the work is a wiki, open View history and cite the revision you actually read. That revision has a date.
6. If the live page has no date, look for a snapshot in the Internet Archive. Chicago prefers that archived URL to a bare access date.
7. Only after those steps fail, apply the no-date rule for your style.

Which dates count, and which do not

The same footer can be a usable date in one style and noise in another. That disagreement is the reason a cross-style "no date" guide exists instead of another website-citation page.

Last updated versus last reviewed

APA's instructional aid Creating an APA Style Reference List Guide draws a hard line for webpages. University reprints of that handout, including the CSULB copy, keep this wording:

A "last reviewed" stamp means someone looked at the page. It does not mean the prose changed. Ignore it in APA. Use a last-updated date only when it is clearly about the content you are citing, not a site-wide refresh. Publication Manual §9.15 says the same thing: a last-updated date counts when it is attributable to the specific content; a last-reviewed date does not.

Copyright footers: APA and MLA disagree

Chicago sits closer to APA for websites. A site-wide "© 2012–2026" line is usually not a publication or revision date for the page you read. If no publication or revision date can be determined, CMOS 18 §14.104 wants an access date, or a Wayback URL, and n.d. in the author-date year slot.

An archived copy can give you a date

Wikipedia and many other wikis keep every revision. APA's Wikipedia reference examples tell you to open View history, pick the version you used, and cite that timestamp and permanent URL. Once you do that, the source is dated. You do not write n.d. for a revision you can point to.

Chicago makes the same move with the Wayback Machine. The official Notes and Bibliography citation guide prefers a publicly archived snapshot to a live URL plus "accessed."

Circa, in press, and n.d. are not interchangeable

• n.d. means you cannot determine a date. It is not a guess.
• ca. (circa) means the date is approximate but reasoned: a letter from about 1910, a painting dated to the 1880s. APA writes the year as (ca. 1910) in both the reference and the in-text citation when that approximation is defensible.
• in press is for a work that has been accepted but not yet published. That is a known status, not a missing year. Do not substitute n.d.
• A reprint year is a publication date. If you also know the original year, the reprint/translation guide at cite reprinted and translated works is the workflow, not this one.

APA 7: write (n.d.) in the reference and in the text

APA never leaves the date slot empty. Section 9.4 and the missing-information table on the APA Style website give the pattern Author. (n.d.). Title. Source. Parenthetical citations are (Author, n.d.); narrative citations are Author (n.d.). Use the same n.d. in both places. Do not invent the current year, and do not silently drop the date.

Official example: a dictionary that never stops updating

Online dictionaries are the cleanest APA no-date case when the entry is continuously updated and not archived. Publication Manual §10.3 and the dictionary entry references page use n.d. plus a retrieval date. When the group author and the dictionary name would repeat, omit the publisher. The Alamo Colleges reprint of that Style Center page, last updated 29 May 2026, still prints the Merriam-Webster specimen.

n.d. is not automatic for every dictionary. The Common Reference Examples Guide last updated 3 March 2026 prints a dated APA Dictionary entry because that entry carries a year:

The older Style Center dictionary page still uses an undated APA Dictionary entry for the continuously updated case. Keep the retrieval date when the entry is designed to change and is not archived.

Two undated works by the same author: n.d.-a and n.d.-b

APA treats n.d. like a year. If you cite two or more undated works by the same author, add a lowercase letter after a hyphen, in title order, and keep those letters in the in-text citations. The letters are not optional. Without them, (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) cannot tell the reader which entry you mean.

Official example: a page designed to change

The 3 March 2026 Common Reference Examples Guide includes a live population counter. The contents are designed to change and are not archived, so the reference keeps n.d. and a retrieval date. Most ordinary webpages do not get that retrieval line.

n.d. does not automatically add a retrieval date. The same 3 March 2026 handout cites a static APA infographic as n.d. and stops at the URL:

Wikipedia is usually a dated source in APA

Do not cite the live Wikipedia article as n.d. APA wants the archived revision. Open View history, click the timestamp you used, and copy the oldid URL. The revision date becomes the date element. Use that workflow in how to cite Wikipedia in APA and in Wikipedia for research.

Retrieval dates are rare in APA 7

Section 9.16 is narrower than many templates still teach. The same Creating a Reference List handout states the cut:

• Retrieval date yes: Merriam-Webster, Worldometer, an unarchived wiki, a Google Maps view generated on demand.
• Retrieval date no: a report, journal article, the Data sharing infographic, or an ordinary webpage that simply never printed a year. Write (n.d.) and stop at the URL.
• Never pair a DOI with a retrieval date. If the work has a DOI, cite the DOI and skip this whole problem; see how to use DOIs.

MLA 9: omit the date. Do not write n.d.

MLA 8 retired n.d., n.p., and n. pag. MLA 9 kept that decision. If you cannot recover a publication date, skip the date element and move to the next core element. The MLA Style Center is explicit:

Access dates when the work has no publication date

MLA 9, p. 211, says an access date should be provided if the work lacks a publication date or is likely to be revised or deleted. That is stronger than "optional decoration" and weaker than "every URL needs Accessed." Stable, dated library and publisher pages can omit it. Informal pages, retail sites, and undated institutional pages should keep it. The Style Center's own access-date post uses this official example:

Use the copyright year before you omit the date

MLA's copyright rule is the step students skip. A page that only shows "© 2024" or "© 2018–2024" is not an undated source in MLA. Cite 2024. Cite a more precise byline date when one exists; the Style Center's publication-date quiz is clear that a byline date beats a footer copyright year. For the Style Center's own Works Cited: A Quick Guide, follow that page's published or copyright year rather than inventing n.d.

In-text citations have no year to lose

MLA in-text citations are author-page, not author-date. An undated source does not create a special parenthetical. Cite the author, or a shortened title if there is no author. Add a locator only when the source has stable pages, numbered paragraphs, or another label the reader can use. Do not insert n.d. into an MLA parenthetical.

Chicago 18: n.d., an access date, or a Wayback URL

Chicago 18 is recoverability-first. The official citation guides say it is often enough to describe a webpage in the prose. Google's privacy policy has an effective date, and Wikipedia's Manual of Style has a last-modified stamp, so those sentences are not no-date citations. Use n.d. only when the page itself lists no publication or revision date.

The dated contrast cases in that guide are Google's privacy policy and Wikipedia: Manual of Style. Cite the effective date or the last-modified stamp. The undated case in the same official examples is Yale Facts. Notes usually lead with the page title; the bibliography leads with the owner or sponsor. Website names stay roman unless they are books, periodicals, or news sites. Chicago keeps the period after the URL.

Notes-Bibliography

Notes-bibliography does not put n.d. in the note when an access or archive date is already doing the dating work. The access or archive phrase is the date element.

Author-Date: lowercase n.d., space in the text citation

Author-date needs a year slot, so CMOS writes n.d. there. The abbreviation is always lowercase. The official Author-Date citation guide states the rule in one sentence, then shows Yale Facts:

The text citation follows ordinary author-date punctuation: a space, not a comma, between the name and the date. Write (Yale University n.d.), not (Yale University, n.d.). The comma belongs only before a locator: (Yale University n.d., 2). Some library guides still print (ELP, n.d.) with an APA-style comma; that is not the CMOS 18 Quick Guide form.

CMOS 18 §14.104 teaching copies use this group-author example for the same undated-website rule:

Access dates are not the default in Chicago 18

Chicago no longer wants an access date on every website. Add one only when no publication or revision date can be determined. If the page says "last modified" or "updated," use that date and skip "accessed." If a Wayback snapshot exists, cite it and you can drop the live access date. That is the opposite of the old habit of appending today's date to every URL.

Print books almost always have a date

An undated modern book is rare. Check the copyright page before you write n.d. CMOS 18 no longer requires a place of publication for post-1900 books, so a missing city is not a missing date. Pre-1900 books may cite the place instead of a publisher (§14.31); that is a different rule. Truly undated manuscripts and archival items belong in Chicago archival sources or Chicago manuscripts, where the date may be a circa span supplied by the finding aid.

Quick comparison

A short recovery checklist

Common mistakes

• Writing today's year because the page has no date. That fabricates a publication date.
• Putting n.d. in an MLA works-cited entry or parenthetical. MLA omitted that abbreviation on purpose.
• Forgetting (n.d.) in APA. An empty year slot is not valid APA.
• Adding "Retrieved from" or an access date to every APA URL. Worldometer needs a retrieval date; the Data sharing infographic does not.
• Using a site-wide copyright range as an APA webpage date.
• Treating "last reviewed" as an APA update.
• Citing the live Wikipedia article as n.d. instead of the revision you read.
• Writing (Yale University, n.d.) in Chicago author-date. APA wants that comma; Chicago does not.
• Giving a post-1900 Chicago book a place of publication just to fill space. CMOS 18 dropped that requirement.
• Using n.d. for a work that is in press, circa-dated, reprinted with a known year, or dated by an effective or last-modified line.

Related guides and official manuals

• How to Cite a Source with No Author
• How to Cite a Website in APA Format
• How to Cite Websites in MLA Format
• How to Cite Websites and Blog Posts in Chicago Style
• Wikipedia for Research: When and How to Use It
• How to Use DOIs
• APA Style: missing reference information
• APA Style: Common Reference Examples Guide (3 March 2026)
• APA Style: Creating an APA Style Reference List Guide
• APA Style: dictionary entry references
• MLA Style Center: no publication date
• MLA Style Center: access dates
• MLA Style Center: copyright date as publication date
• Chicago Notes-Bibliography citation guide
• Chicago Author-Date citation guide
• Internet Archive Wayback Machine