Why Every Student Should Use a Citation Generator

Today, with the help of numerous free online generators of citations and bibliographic lists, you can easily create and convert references to almost all known international citation formats (styles). As a rule, it is enough to go to the service page and use the automatic or manual mode.

After selecting the citation format, document type (monograph, journal article, etc.), as well as entering primary data (journal name, year, volume, issue, author or authors of the article, title, pages of the article, etc.), you get a ready-made output reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, ASA, IEEE, AMA, and many other styles.

Most of these services, such as CustomWritings Citation Generator offer convenient interfaces and additional functionality for further formatting and storing lists of citations. We will try to outline briefly why citation generators are worth paying attention to.

Why you should use citation generators

You will save your time

Most citation generators are dedicated to facilitating the procedure for preparing scientific sources in accordance with the college or university requirements. With the help of a citation generator, you can create your list of used sources quickly and easily.

You can use them on Android and iOS devices

There are many powerful, feature-rich, free citation management tools available online and supported on iOS and Android platforms. They allow users to scan books and magazine barcodes using a mobile device and generate citations automatically.

You can format scientific information properly

Popular citation generators help students and professional researchers format the scientific information they use properly. Their main goal is to enable scientists to bring their information sources into line with the standards of numerous academic journals as quickly and easily as possible. Therefore, there is virtually no reason not to use their services.

You can get citations in any format

Many convenient, multifunctional citation generators provide the ability to both manually and automatically build reference lists in the main international citation formats. You should simply copy the article URL you want to cite, for example on this site, add it to the citation generator and it will cite it properly.

You will avoid plagiarism

We remind you that using other people’s ideas and research without providing references is plagiarism. Citation generators encourage you to avoid plagiarism and actively quote colleagues, giving due respect to their scientific work.

It is much easier to use generators than to do everything manually

If you use a citation generator, it will do all the work for you. However, if you try to do it yourself, it will become more difficult. Let’s look at how much effort you should put into adding a citation and reference manually in MS Word.

If you add a new citation to a document, a new reference will also be created and appear in the bibliography.

1. Open the document in which you want to create a bibliography and go to the “References” tab.

2. In “Bibliography,” click the arrow near “Style.”

3. From the drop-down menu, select the style you need to apply to the literary source.

Note. If the document to which you are adding a bibliography is in the social sciences, we recommend that you use the “APA” and “MLA” styles for references and citations.”

4. Click the dot at the end of the document or expression that will be used as a reference.
5. Click the “Insert Citation” button located in the “Citations and Bibliography” group on the “References” tab.
6. Perform the required action:

• Add a new source: add information about a new source of literature;
• Add new placeholder: add the placeholder needed to show where the quote is in the text. This command also allows you to enter additional information. In the “Source Manager,” a question mark will appear near placeholder sources.

7. Click the arrow next to the Type of Source field to enter information about the literature source.

Note. You can use a book, web resource, report, etc., as a literary source.

8. Enter the bibliographic information required for the selected bibliographic source.

Tip: To enter additional information, select the “Show all bibliography fields” checkbox.

If you use citation generators, you don’t have to search for literature sources. If you decide to do it yourself, you will take the following steps:

Depending on the type of document being created and its size, the list of references may also vary. It’s good if the list of literature the user consults is small, but the opposite is quite possible. If the list of references is truly extensive, some of them may be referenced in another document.

1. Go to the “References” tab and click the “Manage Sources” button located in the “Citations and Bibliography” group.

Notes:

• If you open a new document that does not yet contain references and citations, the bibliographic sources used in the documents and created previously will be placed in the “Master List.”
• If you open a document that already contains references and citations, its references will appear in the “Current List.” Literary sources mentioned in this and/or previously created documents will also be listed in the “Master List.”

2. To search for the required literary source, do one of the following:

• Sort by title, author name, or year. Find the desired literary source in the resulting list.
• Enter the name of the author or the title of the literary source you want to find in the search bar. A dynamically updated list will display items that match your search.

As you can see, working with citations manually is very time-consuming and complicated. That’s why it is better to use citation generators.