Citation styles explained: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver

Two families: author–date and numeric

Every major style belongs to one of two families. Author–date styles (APA, Harvard, Chicago author–date, MLA loosely) cite as (Smith, 2023) in the text and sort the reference list alphabetically — readers see who and when at a glance. Numeric styles (IEEE, Vancouver) cite as [1] and list references in citation order — compact, favored where citations are dense.

This is why switching styles is more than find-and-replace: the bibliography reorders, and in-text mentions change shape. Let software do it.

Which style does your field use?

Conventions by discipline, with the usual caveat that the target journal always wins:

• APA 7 — psychology, education, most social sciences, nursing, business.
• MLA 9 — literature, languages, humanities coursework.
• Chicago — history and some humanities journals (notes-bibliography variant) and social sciences (author–date variant).
• Harvard — a family of author–date variants common in UK/Australian universities; check your institution’s exact flavor.
• IEEE — engineering, computer science, technical conferences.
• Vancouver — medicine and biomedical journals (ICMJE recommendations).

One paper, six formats

For a 2023 journal article by Maria Chen and James Okafor in "Cognitive Science", the same reference renders as: APA — Chen, M., & Okafor, J. (2023). Sleep deprivation and working memory. Cognitive Science. MLA — Chen, Maria, and James Okafor. "Sleep Deprivation and Working Memory." Cognitive Science, 2023. IEEE — M. Chen and J. Okafor, "Sleep deprivation and working memory," Cognitive Science, 2023. Vancouver — Chen M, Okafor J. Sleep deprivation and working memory. Cognitive Science. 2023. The data are identical; only the template differs — which is exactly why reference managers store data, not formatted strings.

• Free citation generator (all six styles)

The workflow that removes the problem

Hand-formatting references is a solved problem. Keep every source in a reference library (Kahubi, Zotero or Mendeley - Kahubi syncs with both), store the metadata once, and render citations in whatever style the venue demands. Switching journals then costs one dropdown change, not an evening.

For Word users, Kahubi’s free Word add-in searches your library from a side panel and inserts in-text citations and the bibliography in any of the six styles. For BibTeX/LaTeX workflows, export your library as .bib and let the bibliography style file do the formatting.

• Kahubi Word add-in
• BibTeX to RIS converter