The majority of students find all the needed information on citing a website like this one you are on right now. However, when it comes to using the information presented on websites, the one has to provide a full acknowledgment of the author. Therefore, a person might encounter a situation where they must cite their source according to the existing formatting rules. As a result, this page overviews major rules on how to cite a website in the most popular formats like APA, MLA, Harvard, and Chicago/Turabian.
APA
When it comes to the question of how to cite the website in APA, among various paper formats, there are a couple of things to consider. Firstly, it is that web pages with authors are cited differently compared to the same with no author. As a result, citing a website APA, one will provide such in-text citations for the website:
With known author – (Last Name, Year of Publication);
With unknown author – (“Title of the Article,” Year of Publication).
Also, one should understand that each in-text citation is always coupled with the bibliographic entry on the “Reference” page. Therefore, websites will have a corresponding reference:
Last Name or “Title of the article.” (Year of Publication). “Title of the article” or nothing if it is already written in the beginning. Publisher. Retrieved from: URL
MLA
In the cases where you must know how to cite a website in MLA, make sure that you follow the order o the information that has to appear on your works cited page. The steps are as follows:
-Author’s Last Name and First Name, divided by comma. A further list of authors has to be inverted with First Name going First and Last Name going second. Also, this part has to be followed by a period;
- Article’s title in quotation marks followed by a period.
- Publisher followed by a comma. Also, this part has to be italicized.
- Date of Publication with a comma after it.
- URL without “http://” or doi number followed by a period.
- End up with the “Accessed” and the current date, followed by a period.
Hence, if any of the steps are missing, just go to the next one.
In your text, make sure to have corresponding in-text citations that differ in case of a known and unknown author. Also, the general format of in-text citations is (Last Name Page Number) for the known author and (“Title of the Article” Page/Paragraph/Line number) for an unknown author.
Chicago/Turabian Format
Unfortunately, everything is not that simple when it comes to how to cite a website in Chicago/Turabian format. The reason for that is that there will be a footnote and a bibliography entry unless it is a rarely used author/date system. Therefore, it is important to classify the difference in the footnote and the corresponding note in the bibliography.
Footnotes
For the footnotes, there are several rules when it comes to the way you acknowledge authors. For example:
- When there is a known author, you write something like First Name Last Name, Last Name, First Name (after the first mention the name and the last name are inverted), “Title of the Website,” Publisher, Year of Publication, page/paragraph used, URL/DOI.
- For the unknown author, you just skip the first part where you have to acknowledge the authors’ names.
- When you mention the same footnote the second time, invert the name of the first author so that all will start with the last name. After that, mention only the title of the website and the page number.
- Mentioning the third time, mention only the author and the page number.
Bibliography
- Last Name, First Name, Last Name, First Name (all names and last names are inverted), “Title of the Website,” Publisher, Year of Publication, URL/DOI.
- All entries have to be organized alphabetically even if there is no author available. Also, in cases where you write the title of the work as the first thing – count the first letters of the title same as the author’s last names and organize everything alphabetically anyway.
Harvard
For the Harvard referencing style, the answer to how to cite a website is similar in many forms, considering previous examples. However, there are unique aspects of formatting that have to be acknowledged.
In-text Citations
- In-text citations do not have a comma between the author and the date.
- Hence, when the author is known – write the last name. Also, if the author is unknown – write the title of the work without quotation marks or italicization.
Reference List
- On the “Reference List” do not forget that initials go without periods after them.
- There will be no comma after names of the authors before the year of publication, which is not in parenthesis too.
- Next, write the title of the web page is italicized.
- After this, write “Available from:” and paste a URL put in <> marks, followed by a period.
- Finally, end up with square parenthesis with the current access date.
Examples
In-text citation – (Last Name Year of Publication)
Entry – Last Name, Initials Year of Publication, Title of the Web Page. Available from: <URL>. [01 March 2019].
Helpful Videos on the Topic
Also, I have managed to gather some helpful videos for you for all paper formats we just talked about.
APA
MLA
Chicago/Turabian
Harvard
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