ASA Citation Generator

Paste one thing into the search box and the ASA citation generator works out what it is before looking it up.

ASA citation machine lookups: DOIs, ISBNs, links and titles

• A DOI (it starts with 10.) is looked up at doi.org, with Crossref as a backup. This is the best route for articles from JSTOR, SocINDEX or a journal site such as the American Sociological Review; the DOI is on the first page of the article.
• An ISBN is looked up in Open Library, then Google Books. ISBN lookups don't fill in the city of publication, which ASA needs, so type it in Edit details.
• A web address is read for the page's own title, author, date and site name. If the page carries a DOI, the DOI record is used instead.
• A title is searched in Crossref and Open Library, closest matches first.

Every result says how sure it is

The ASA citation maker never invents a missing detail. A result is marked Source details matched when it came from a database record, Details need review when fields are missing or came from the web page, and Entered by you for manual entries. Missing fields are highlighted.

Select Try it with an example to load Kahneman and Tversky's 1979 Econometrica article.

ASA references look a lot like Chicago author-date, with a few habits of their own: the year comes right after the names, article titles sit in quotation marks, and the volume, issue and pages run together with no spaces. Each part below comes from the Granovetter reference the ASA citation generator produced.

ASA citation format example: books and reports

Book titles are italicized and followed by the city and publisher: Desmond, Matthew. 2016. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. New York: Crown. Reports work the same way, with the agency as publisher and the report number after the title.

The ASA citation reference page

The list goes on its own page at the end of the paper, headed References, in alphabetical order by the first author's last name. Entries are double-spaced with a half-inch hanging indent. Some instructors and handouts want the heading in capitals (REFERENCES); the Word file's heading is References, centered and not bold, so adjust it if your guide wants all caps or bold. For two works by the same author, the older one comes first.

ASA is an author-date style, so every ASA in-text citation points to its reference with the author's last name and the year. The ASA citation generator gives you two versions on the citation tabs.

In-text citation ASA rules at a glance

• Parenthetical: (Granovetter 1973). There is no comma between the name and the year.
• With a page: type the page in the page box and you get (Granovetter 1973:1361). ASA puts a colon before the page, with no space and no "p."
• Narrative: when the name is part of your sentence, use the Narrative tab: Granovetter (1973) argues that weak ties carry new information.
• Two authors: (Kahneman and Tversky 1979), with "and" written out.
• Three authors: the generator gives all three, (Kalleberg, Reskin, and Hudson 2000). Most ASA guides say to use the first name plus et al. for later citations of the same work, so shorten it by hand after the first mention.
• Four or more authors: the first author plus et al., such as (Polack et al. 2020).

ASA in-text citation example with several sources

To cite two sources at once, put them in one set of parentheses separated by a semicolon, such as (Desmond 2016; Pager 2003). The generator formats one source at a time, so join the citations yourself. For two works by the same author in the same year, ASA adds a and b after the year (2016a, 2016b); add the letters by hand in both the citation and the reference.

Each source type has its own form in the ASA style citation machine, with only the fields that type needs. Here is what to watch for in each.

Journal articles

Paste the DOI. Authors, title, journal, year, volume, issue and pages fill in, and article titles are put in title case.

Books and edited book chapters

Paste the ISBN, then check the author, year, publisher and city. For a chapter in an edited collection, choose Book chapter and add the editors, book title and pages.

Websites and online reports

Paste the URL. The ASA citation generator prints the author or organization, the year, the page title in quotation marks and the URL. It leaves out the website name and, when the page has a date, the access date. Several university guides to ASA 7th edition add an access date in the form (Accessed Month Day, Year), so add it by hand when your instructor wants one. With no publication date, the generator uses n.d. in place of the year and adds Retrieved Month Day, Year before the URL; change it to your guide's wording if needed.

Government data and reports

For Census Bureau or Pew Research Center reports, choose Report under More and enter the authors or agency, title, report number, publisher and link.

Newspapers, magazines and videos

News sites that tag their pages as news articles come back as the Newspaper type. The style file doesn't print a URL for news, so paste the link at the end if your course asks for it. For a documentary, choose Film or video.

This generator formats references and in-text citations only, so set up the points below yourself in Word or Google Docs.

ASA citation title page

ASA papers usually start with a separate title page. Many department guides list the full title, your name and school, a running head of 60 characters or fewer, and a word count that includes footnotes and references. Many US courses simplify it to the title, your name, the course (for example SOC 101), your instructor and the date. If your instructor wants an APA-style cover page instead, the APA Title Page Generator lays one out.

ASA style heading levels

ASA uses up to three levels of heading. A common pattern in 7th edition guides:

• First level: all capitals, flush left, such as METHODS or DISCUSSION.
• Second level: italics, flush left, main words capitalized.
• Third level: indented, italics, sentence case, ending with a period, with the text running on after it.

Most guides also call for 12-point Times New Roman and double spacing throughout. Check your length with the Word Counter, which can leave the References page out of the count.

The American Sociological Association Style Guide, 7th edition, was published by the American Sociological Association in 2022. It sets the rules for ASA journals such as the American Sociological Review, and many US sociology departments ask students to use it. For a free summary with examples, see the UCSB Library guide to ASA style.

What this ASA citation generator uses

References are formatted with the Citation Style Language project's ASA style file, which covers the 6th and 7th editions; the style file's own notes say reference formatting is the same in both. It gives full first names, the year after the authors, title case, quotation marks for articles and italics for books and journals.

Who uses ASA citation style in the US

You will meet ASA in sociology, criminology, social work and some public policy courses. Many social-science instructors accept APA 7 or Chicago author-date instead, so check the syllabus. If you need one of those, the APA Citation Machine and the Chicago Citation Generator work the same way.

Every source you add goes into a saved list, and the ASA citation maker keeps that list in alphabetical order for you, the way ASA requires.

Saved lists in your browser

Keep a list per assignment, such as "SOC 210 literature review". A list holds up to 300 sources. Lists are saved in this browser, so they don't follow you to another computer, and clearing browser data deletes them. If you try to add the same source twice, the tool tells you it is already on your list.

Download formats

• Download for Word gives a .docx file headed References, in Times New Roman 12 pt, double-spaced, with a half-inch hanging indent.
• Copy all copies the whole list, ready for Word or Google Docs.
• More formats gives plain text, RIS (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote) and BibTeX (LaTeX, Overleaf).

The Alphabetizer is handy if you ever need to sort a pasted list by hand.

Sociology students often meet three author-date styles in one degree. Here is the same 1973 article in each, all from this site's generators (APA article titles retyped in sentence case, as APA requires).

ASA and Chicago look almost the same; the giveaways are ASA's colon before the page and the closed-up 78(6):1360–80. APA uses initials and sentence case. For numbered styles used in other sciences, see the AMA Citation Generator for medicine and nursing, or browse every style on the citation machines page.

Most errors in ASA lists come from APA habits.

The ASA citation generator is free, with no account and a fair-use cap of 60 lookups every 10 minutes. Here is where your information goes.

• Lookups: what you type in the search box goes to our server, which asks doi.org, then Crossref, for DOIs; Open Library, then Google Books, for ISBNs; Crossref and Open Library for titles; or the public page you linked, for URLs. Results are cached for up to six hours.
• Formatting: source details are sent to our server, formatted, and sent back. They are not stored.
• Your lists: saved lists are stored only in your browser's local storage. When a list is formatted, its sources' details are sent to our server and back, and not stored.

The ASA style citation machine never asks for your paper or your name.

References in this ASA citation generator are formatted by citeproc-js, the open-source citation processor used by Zotero and Mendeley, with the Citation Style Language project's American Sociological Association style file. That file is maintained by Zotero and CSL volunteers; it is not published by the American Sociological Association. The same engine powers the Vancouver Citation Generator and the MLA Citation Maker.