How to Cite a Website

With the massive volume of information now available on the internet, traditional referencing and citation from journals or papers is comparatively costly per unit effort. There is still much negative stigma around citing from internet sites within the academic world. Here is current best practice (to MLA, APA and Chicago Manual of Style guidelines).

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Steps

1- List any details required for the reader to be able to easily find your source: the URL, the Author (if possible), the title of the website and article, the date it was published and the date of which you found the information. 

2- Use the appropriate citation system. You should be told which citation system you are expected to use, if not, ask. Should this not be possible, simply provide as much information as you can about the source.

3- For Modern Language Association (MLA) style you have to note a reference to your citation in the text and then detail the website in the specific section of your appendix. The reference will be in parenthesis and should be within the punctuation. Also note the author but if you don’t know their name, list the article title instead. Note that the MLA style does not longer require the URL as these are not always static. If you are required to give one, put it immediately after the date of access in a new sentence, so that it reads “26th March 13. <https://www.mensguidetoeverything.com>.”, with a full stop after the final >. In total, you will require (in this order): The Editor. The author’s name. The name of site. The version number. The name of the institution/organization affiliated with the site. The date of resource creation (if present). The medium of publication. The date of access.

4- For American Psychological Association style you should note a reference in the text, then include the reference in full at the end of the assignment. State the “author-date” (put the last name of the author, a comma, and the year of the publication inside the parentheses). APA references should be listed in the reference list as follows and in this order:  The author (month and year of publication). The title of the article. The title of the website, the journal, the volume number (if available). Retrieved from “The digital object identifier (DOI), if not the URL”

5-  For Chicago Manual of Style Website Citations you will be using footnotes. You should have an entry for your source on the footnote of the relevant page, and another entry in the bibliography. In the footnote you should cite as follows: The first name and then the last name, “the title of Web Page,” The publishing organization or the name of website in italics, publication date and/or access date if available, URL. You will then cite the site in your bibliography as follows: The last name, the first name. “The title of Web Page.” The publishing organization or the website name in Italics. The publication date and/or access date if available. The URL.

Tips

If you’re not sure what reference system you’re supposed to use, ask!