Citation Style Identifier
Paste a reference list — or a single reference — and see which of eight citation styles it follows: APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago notes-bibliography or author-date, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver or AMA. Every verdict comes with a confidence and the evidence behind it, and nothing leaves your browser. Free, no sign-up.
Paste at least one reference. The verdict updates as you type, and nothing leaves your browser.
Plain text loses italics, one of the clearest differences between styles, so the verdict rests on punctuation, order and wording alone. Harvard here means Cite Them Right; other Harvard variants score as Harvard too.
How to Use the Citation Style Identifier
- 1. Paste your references. One per line or separated by blank lines; numbered lists such as [1] or 1. work too. Whole references work best — authors, year, title and source.
- 2. Add an in-text citation if you have one. A citation such as (Smith, 2020) or [3] separates styles whose reference lists look alike, so it counts as one more vote.
- 3. Read the verdict. You get the most likely style, how confident the tool is and how many references agree. Where two styles are near-twins, the panel says what tells them apart and links to a comparison.
- 4. Open the evidence. Each reference lists the clues it carried — the year in brackets, the way names are written, quotation marks, vol., doi: — so you can check the reasoning or spot the one reference written in a different style.
How Each Style Gives Itself Away
A citation style leaves fingerprints in plain text. The tool checks each reference for more than seventy of them, each pointing towards some styles and away from others, and adds up the weight. The strongest clues are where the year sits and how the author's name is written:
| Clue | Looks like | Style |
|---|---|---|
| Year in brackets, full stop after it | Hirsch, J. E. (2005). | APA 7 |
| Year in brackets, no full stop | Hirsch, J.E. (2005) ‘An index…’, | Harvard (Cite Them Right) |
| Year straight after the full name | Hirsch, Jorge E. 2005. “An Index…” | Chicago author-date |
| Year after vol. and no., set off by commas | vol. 102, no. 46, 2005, pp. 16569–72 | MLA 9 |
| Year in brackets before a colon | 102, no. 46 (2005): 16569–72 | Chicago notes-bibliography |
| Number in brackets, initials first, title in quotation marks | [1] J. E. Hirsch, “An index…,” | IEEE |
| Surname with bare initials, then year;volume(issue):pages | Hirsch JE. … 2005;102(46):16569-72. | Vancouver or AMA |
Smaller clues settle the rest. An ampersand between authors is APA's; Harvard, MLA, Chicago and IEEE write “and”, while Vancouver and AMA use commas alone. MLA puts a comma before a URL and Chicago a full stop. Harvard writes “Available at:” and “(Accessed: 5 October 2026)”, Vancouver “[Internet]” and “[cited 2026 Oct 5]”, IEEE “[Online]. Available:”. A DOI written as doi:10.1001/jama.2021.0411, with no space, is AMA's habit; doi: 10.… with a space is Vancouver's and IEEE's; https://doi.org/ is APA 7's. And “Retrieved from” before a link is a sign of APA 6 — APA 7 dropped it.
Lookalikes and What Plain Text Hides
Some pairs of styles are hard to tell apart, and the tool says so rather than guessing:
- APA 7 and Cite Them Right Harvard. Both start with surname and initials and put the year in brackets. APA follows the year with a full stop and joins authors with &; Harvard has no full stop, writes “and”, closes up initials (T.S.) and puts article titles in single quotation marks.
- Vancouver and AMA. Both number the list and write names as Kahneman D, Tversky A. AMA gives page ranges in full (263-291) and writes doi:10.… with no space; Vancouver shortens pages (263-91), may add the month after the year and writes doi: 10.… with a space.
- MLA 9 and Chicago 18. A book can be identical in both — Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1962. — so the tool calls a dead heat. Articles differ: MLA writes vol. 47, no. 2, 1979, pp. 263–91, and Chicago 47, no. 2 (1979): 263–91.
- Chicago's two systems. Author-date puts the year straight after the names; notes-bibliography moves it towards the end.
Italics are the other blind spot. Book and journal titles are italic in most styles, and APA italicises the volume number too, but italics vanish when text is pasted, so none of that can be seen. The verdict rests on punctuation, order and wording alone.
Example: One Article in Harvard and AMA
Two references to the same article
Harvard (Cite Them Right) — high confidence
Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1979) ‘Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk’, Econometrica, 47(2), pp. 263–291.
AMA — medium confidence, Vancouver close behind
2. Kahneman D, Tversky A. Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica. 1979;47(2):263-291.
The Harvard reference scores on six clues: surname and initials, “and” between the authors, the year in brackets with no full stop after it, volume(issue) with no space, “pp.” and the title in single quotation marks. The second reference is numbered, with Vancouver-style names and year;volume(issue):pages — all shared by Vancouver and AMA — and only the full page range, 263-291, tips it towards AMA. That is why the verdict is medium confidence and the panel explains the Vancouver–AMA difference.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How can I tell what citation style a reference is in?
- Look at where the year sits and how the names are written. A bracketed year with a full stop after surname and initials is APA; a bracketed year with no full stop is Harvard; a bare year after full names is Chicago author-date; a year near the end after vol. and no. is MLA; and a numbered list with surnames followed by bare initials is Vancouver or AMA. The identifier checks those patterns and dozens of smaller ones for you.
- Can it tell APA and Harvard apart?
- Usually. APA 7 puts a full stop after the bracketed year, joins authors with an ampersand and spaces initials (T. S.); Cite Them Right Harvard leaves out the full stop, writes “and”, closes up initials (T.S.) and puts article titles in single quotation marks. A short book reference can show too few of these, and then the tool reports the two as close rather than picking one.
- Why does a book show as MLA or Chicago?
- Because MLA 9 and Chicago 18 write a book the same way: surname, full first name, title, publisher and year. Chicago 18 no longer requires the place of publication that used to set the two apart. Paste an article from the same list, or an in-text citation — (Kuhn 45) is MLA, (Kuhn 1962, 45) is Chicago author-date and a numbered footnote is Chicago notes — to break the tie.
- Does it work with numbered styles like IEEE and Vancouver?
- Yes. IEEE numbers references in square brackets and puts initials before surnames — [1] T. S. Kuhn — with article titles in quotation marks. Vancouver and AMA number with 1., write Kuhn TS with no full stops and give year;volume(issue):pages for articles. Paste the list with its numbers, and add an in-text citation such as [3] or a superscript number if you have one.
- How accurate is the citation style identifier?
- On complete references it is usually right, and it shows its working so you can judge for yourself. In tests on references written to each manual's patterns, and on this site's own generator output in all eight styles, every reference came out as the right style or as a declared tie between true lookalikes. It is weaker on short or partial references, on house styles that mix rules, and on anything that depends on italics.
- Is my reference list uploaded anywhere?
- No. The analysis runs entirely in your browser and the text you paste is never sent to a server. Close the tab and it is gone.