how to cite information from a website in an essay

Citing a website in APA Style. An APA reference for a webpage lists the author’s last name and initials, the full date of publication, the title of the page (in italics), the website name (in plain text), and the URL. The in-text citation lists the author’s last name and the year.

Reference citations in text are covered on pages 261-268 of the Publication Manual. What follows are some general guidelines for referring to the works of others in your essay.

To cite a website or online article in APA Style, you need the author, title, date, website name, and URL.

Learn the essential elements of citing a website in an essay, such as author, date, title, site name, URL, and page number. Follow the rules and examples for APA and MLA styles, and check the exceptions for no author, no date, multiple authors, and more.

An MLA website citation includes the author’s name, the title of the page (in quotation marks), the name of the website (in italics), the publication date, and the URL (without “https://”). If the author is unknown, start with the title of the page instead.

MLA uses the phrase, “Accessed” to denote which date you accessed the web page when available or necessary. It is not required to do so, but it is encouraged (especially when there is no copyright date listed on a website). Include a URL or web address to help readers locate your sources.

Use our citation generator below to automatically cite a website in any style, including APA, MLA 7 and 8, and Harvard. Just select the style you need, copy the URL into the search box, and press search.

Use the newspaper article category for articles from newspaper websites such as The New York Times or The Washington Post. Provide the writer as the author. Provide the specific date the story was published. Provide the title of the news story in italic sentence case. List the name of the news website in the source element of the reference.

Note: If you are quoting or paraphrasing part of a website, you should create a reference for a Page or Section. If you mention a website in general, do not create a reference list entry or an in-text citation. Instead, include the name of the website in the text and provide the URL in parentheses. Example:

Learn how to write in-text citations and reference list entries for websites or webpages using APA Style. Find out how to determine authors, dates, titles, and formats for different types of sources on the web.