Upload your paper and we format your reference list, bibliography, or works cited to your chosen style: author order, italics, capitalization, and punctuation, entry by entry, as tracked changes you can accept or reject.
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Word (.docx) on every plan; LaTeX (.tex) on paid plans. Up to 45 MB. Up to 150,000 words
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9 citation styles
APA 7, MLA 9, Harvard, Chicago Author-Date and Notes-Bibliography, OSCOLA 5, IEEE, Vancouver, and AMA 11. Your choice.
List, bibliography, or works cited
We recognize and format whichever reference section your style requires.
Case, italics & punctuation
Sentence vs title case, italicized journals and volumes, and consistent punctuation.
Missing details, on plans
Monthly and Yearly plans can turn on reference autofill (off by default). Verified details such as DOIs arrive as tracked changes; entries it cannot verify are left for your review.
Upload your Word file on this page, choose the citation style your university or publisher requires, and start. The editor formats each entry in your reference list, bibliography, or works cited to that style, on average in 5–10 minutes, and returns your file with every change as a tracked change to accept or reject.
In each entry, the editor looks at:
This service works on the reference section only. To format in-text citations and edit the main text as well, use AI editing or AI proofreading, which cover the whole document, references included.
9 citation styles: APA 7, MLA 9, Harvard (Cite Them Right), Chicago 18 Author-Date, Chicago 18 Notes-Bibliography, OSCOLA 5, IEEE, Vancouver, and AMA 11. Pick one in the uploader and every entry is formatted to it. Fiction and nonfiction books use the Chicago Manual of Style or the New Oxford Style Manual instead.
If you are not sure which style to use, the answer is almost always set for you: a university department names one in its thesis handbook, and a journal names one in its author guidelines. When nothing is specified, pick the style most common in your field and use it consistently.
Each style links to a go-to guide with its core rules and examples:
On Monthly and Yearly plans, AI editing also accepts a Custom style for academic documents, built from your own instructions, for a house style that is not on the list.
Reference editing formats the entries themselves. Matching is a separate, free check: the cross-reference check highlights in-text citations that have no entry in your reference list, and entries that are never cited, so you can fix gaps before submission. It is free on every plan.
Run the cross-reference check before or after you format your references. It returns your own document with highlights and comments rather than edits, and it does not use your words or document allowance.
Mismatches are more common than most authors expect: a citation reads Author (2019) while the list says 2020, a co-author's name is spelled two ways, or a source cut from an early chapter is still sitting in the list. Formatting alone will not catch those, which is why the two tools work best together: check first, fix the gaps, then format.
No. It formats the entries you already have and does not add sources to your list. Autofill, on Monthly and Yearly plans and off by default, adds only details it can verify, as tracked changes you review, and leaves unverifiable entries for you. Like any AI it can make mistakes, so read each change.
The line between formatting and changing a source matters. Moving the year, italicizing a journal name, or switching title case to sentence case changes how an entry looks. Replacing the work it points to, or adding a new work to your list, would change what you are citing, and the editor is not asked to do that.
Autofill is the one feature that adds information. When you turn it on, the editor looks for entries that are missing details such as a DOI. Details it can verify are added as tracked changes, so you see exactly what was added; entries it cannot verify are left as they are for you to complete. Autofill is off unless you turn it on, and it is available on Monthly and Yearly plans.
No. Citation fields from Zotero, EndNote, and Mendeley are edited in place without breaking them, so the fields stay live and linked to your library. The editor changes formatting inside the field, not the authors or years it points to.
One thing to know: if you later refresh citations from Zotero, EndNote, or Mendeley, the citation manager regenerates the fields from its own style settings, which can undo formatting changes. Set the citation manager to the same style before you refresh.
If your references were typed by hand, there are no fields to worry about: the editor formats the typed entries directly, and the result is ordinary text with tracked changes.
A reference list contains only the works you cite in the text, while a bibliography can also include works you consulted. The name depends on the style: APA calls it References, MLA calls it Works Cited, Harvard uses a Reference list, and Chicago notes-bibliography and OSCOLA use a Bibliography.
Reference editing formats whichever of these your style needs, and the style guides on our blog explain the rules behind each one.
Most reference-list errors are small and repetitive: the wrong capitalization in titles, missing italics, missing or extra punctuation between elements, the wrong joining word between authors, hyphens where the style needs en dashes, and outdated DOI formats. The examples below, with invented entries, show each fix in APA 7.
None of these errors changes what you cite, but together they make a reference list look careless, and examiners and reviewers notice. Fixing them by hand across a list of a hundred or more entries is slow and easy to get wrong, which is where formatting every entry to one style in a single pass helps.
Upload your document and get tracked changes back in 5–10 minutes on average.
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