Citation Machine is a website that helps students learn how to format citations and references. According to the site, “Citation machine helps students and professional researchers to properly credit the information that they use. Its primary goal is to make it so easy for student researchers to cite their information sources.”
The site also includes a “most cited today” section where it displays some of the most recently cited websites and books.
A student can simply put in a site and author information and it will give the appropriate example of how to cite that information within their paper in APA or MLA. If the student has the ISBN number, it is even easier.
The following example shows how entering the ISBN can return APA citation results. First enter the ISBN.
Then hit submit. That will pull up a page that looks something like this.
Click “Make Citation” and it will create the biographical citation information for the reference page as well as the in-text citation information that will look like this.
Note that I did not enter the publisher or publishing city information in the prior example. This led to a citation that is lacking that information. I purposely did that to show that if information is left out, the results may not be perfect. Although the in-text citation information is correct here, the reference page information is missing the publisher and location. Be sure to double-check that all appropriate information is input or the output may not be correct.
If you do not have the ISBN, you can enter the information you do have. Note that on the left side of the screen, the site gives you choices of books, articles, journals, blogs and more. Click on the appropriate source and enter the information that you have.
Although this system is not fool-proof, it can be a helpful instrument in guiding students regarding APA or MLA citation and reference formatting.
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