Bibliography & Reference List Formatter

A reference list is where small mistakes cost marks: a missing italic, initials in the wrong place, a year in brackets where it should not be. This formatter takes the references you already have — exported from Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote or Google Scholar, or just a list of DOIs — and prints the whole list in the style you need, sorted and indented, ready for Word or Google Docs.

Getting your references in

Paste or open a BibTeX (.bib), RIS (.ris) or CSL-JSON file; the format is detected automatically. If you only have DOIs, paste them in any form — bare, as doi.org links, or inside sentences. The tool finds them and offers to look them up. Only the DOIs are sent to Crossref, the agency that registers them, and the results are written back into the box as RIS so you can correct anything before formatting.

What changes between styles

APA 7 puts the year in brackets straight after the authors, uses initials, and italicises the journal and volume. MLA 9 writes the first author’s full name surname-first, puts article titles in quotation marks and ends with the date and pages. Chicago’s notes-bibliography style resembles MLA but places the year after the volume. Harvard, in the Cite Them Right form most UK universities teach, uses “Author, A. (Year) ‘Title’, Journal, volume(issue), pp. pages.” IEEE gives initials before surnames, abbreviates months (Mar. 2020) and numbers the list.

Order and numbering

APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard lists are alphabetical by first author, which the tool does for you. If a lecturer wants a reading list in a set order, switch on “Keep the input order”. IEEE is always numbered in the order the references are given, matching the order of first citation in the text.

Copying into a document

“Copy formatted” places both rich text and plain text on the clipboard. Word, Google Docs, Pages and most email editors take the rich version, keeping italics and the hanging indent. The Word download goes further: a centred heading, double spacing and 0.5-inch hanging indents, which is what most style guides and markers expect.

Checks the tool makes

Under the list, the tool reports references with no year, no title, no author or no journal name for an article. Those are the gaps most likely to make an entry look wrong. Titles are printed as entered, so check capitalisation for APA, which uses sentence case for article titles.

A worked example

The sample holds a Science article by Tversky and Kahneman, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and a World Health Organization fact sheet. In APA the list is ordered Kimmerer, Tversky, World Health Organization; in Harvard the fact sheet reads “World Health Organization (2024) Physical activity.” followed by its address and access date.

Common reference-list mistakes

A few errors account for most lost marks. Listing the same author’s works in the wrong order: APA and Harvard put the oldest first, and works with three or more authors are ordered by all the names. Mixing styles because some entries were copied from a database page. Missing DOIs for journal articles, which APA 7 asks for whenever one exists. And inconsistent capitalisation: decide on sentence case or title case for the whole list. Formatting everything from one source file fixes the first three automatically.

Related tools

Convert libraries between formats with the BibTeX Converter, build individual citations in the Citation Generator, plan a review with the Literature Matrix Builder, or check your essay length with the Word Counter.