How to cite a book
One book, formatted five ways, with the differences named.
Every style asks for the same facts about a book — who wrote it, what it is called, who published it, when. They disagree about the order, the punctuation and how much of the author's name to spell out. Below is one real book, formatted five ways, with the differences named.
One book, five styles
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, fourth edition, University of Chicago Press, 2012 (ISBN 9780226458113).
MLA (9th edition)
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 2012.
APA (7th edition)
Kuhn, T. S. (2012). The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
Chicago (bibliography style)
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Wikipedia (cite book template)
{{cite book |last=Kuhn |first=Thomas S. |title=The Structure of Scientific Revolutions |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=2012 |isbn=9780226458113}}
BibTeX
@book{kuhn2012structure,
author = {Kuhn, Thomas S.},
title = {The Structure of Scientific Revolutions},
publisher = {University of Chicago Press},
year = {2012}
}
What actually differs
Four decisions account for nearly all of it. Once you can see them, an unfamiliar style stops being a list of rules to memorise.
| Decision | MLA | APA | Chicago |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the year sits | at the end | straight after the author | at the end |
| Author's given name | spelled out | initials only | spelled out |
| Title capitalisation | Title Case | Sentence case | Title Case |
| Place of publication | dropped in MLA 9 | dropped in APA 7 | kept |
Where the year sits is the one difference with a reason behind it. APA is used in fields where how recent a finding is affects whether you should rely on it, so the date sits second, before the title. MLA is used where the work itself is the object of study, and a 1962 book is not less relevant for being from 1962, so the date goes last.
Which one to use
Use whichever your instructor, journal or publisher specifies — that always wins. Absent instruction: MLA for literature and the humanities, APA for psychology, education, nursing and the social sciences, Chicago for history and art history. BibTeX is not a style but a data format: LaTeX reads it and applies whatever style your document class specifies. The Wikipedia template is likewise data, filled in by the article's citation style.
When a field is missing
Catalog records are incomplete far more often than people expect, and every style has an answer for it.
No author
Edited collections and corporate reports frequently have none. Start the entry with the title, and alphabetise on the first significant word. If an editor is named, MLA and Chicago take the editor followed by "editor" or "ed."
No date
APA uses (n.d.). MLA and Chicago simply omit it. Do not guess a year from a
copyright page you have not seen — a reprint's date is not the work's date.
Edition versus printing
An edition is a revision of the text; a printing is another run of the same text. Only the edition is cited. "Fourth printing" on the copyright page is not "fourth edition", and a catalog record will sometimes conflate them.
Two ISBNs for one book
Hardback and paperback carry different ISBNs, and an ebook a third. They are the same work and cite identically; the ISBN itself does not appear in MLA or APA at all.
Generate one
Enter an ISBN on the home page and you get all five formats at once, built from published catalog records. A generated citation is a starting point: check it against your style guide before you submit, particularly the capitalisation of the title, which catalogs store inconsistently.
See also: how to build a works cited page.
More from OttoBib
- Building a works cited page. Ordering, hanging indents, and what Works Cited, References and Bibliography each actually mean.
- Citing a translated book. Which year, which title, and where the translator goes.
- Checking whether a citation is real. Models produce citations that look correct and are not. The ISBN is the part you can test.
- Why citation styles disagree. MLA counts pages, APA counts years, historians use footnotes and medicine uses numbers. Each follows from what that field cites.
- ISBN converter and validator. Convert between ISBN-10 and ISBN-13, check a check digit, and see which registration group issued it. Runs in your browser.