How to Cite a Website in an Essay

Finding proper information when writing an essay is pretty important because the writer is kind of responsible for the info he is spreading within the society. At the same time, the writer must leave links where he has got this or that data. It is important to give credit to the original author when you borrow some info from another source, another website and place it in yours. That is why we all need to understand how to cite a website in an essay or how to cite a quote from a website in an essay. Below you will find a detailed description of using every type of the presented style guides.

Style Guides and Citation Systems

There are different style guides on websites. It may make you confused, but once you find out which guide you use, all you have to do is follow that format. Here are some style guides or citation systems we will review today:

• APA
• MLA
• Chicago Citation Style Guide

APA Citation Style

APA stands for American Psychological Association and is used within social sciences the most frequently.

There are two types of APA citing structure.

The one is with an author and all you have to do is write an author’s name (Surname, the first letter of his name), then you have to write an exact date of publication and where you retrieved this info. In general, it will look like:

“Author, A. (Year, month and date of publication). Retrieved from URL”

The second one is without an author and you will have to make an author’s name replaced by an article title.

It will look like:

“Article title. (Year, month and date of publication). Retrieved from URL”

MLA Citation Style

MLA stands for the Modern Language Association. This organization has its own citation style that is used for humanities subjects (such as language, literature, liberal arts, etc.). If this method of citation you decided to use, you will have to write down an author’s last name, then the first one, which means it goes reversed. The article title is next, then you will have to write the title of an individual web page, the title of a website, the publisher, the date and the link (URL). If you want to know how to cite a website in an essay MLA, scroll down!

The basic format of MLA style will look this way:

“Author’s last name, Author’s first name. “Title of Web Page.” Website’s Title, Publisher, Exact Date, URL.

Chicago Citation Style

You can meet with this type on a website too and you have to know that it consists of two varieties:

• notes and bibliography
• author-date

The bigger part of people uses the one that is required by their publishers or the one that is used by people in their field.

The basic format of Chicago Citation Style looks like:

“Author’s Last Name, Author’s First Name. ”Page Title.” Website Title. Web Address (Retrieved Date Accessed)”