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How to Cite a Thesis or Dissertation in MLA

Citing a thesis or dissertation.

Thesis – A document submitted to earn a degree at a university.

Dissertation – A document submitted to earn an advanced degree, such as a doctorate, at a university.

The formatting for thesis and dissertation citations is largely the same. However, you should be sure to include the type of degree after the publication year as supplemental information. For instance, state if the source you are citing is an undergraduate thesis or a PhD dissertation.

MLA Thesis and Dissertation Citation Structure (print)

Last, First M.  Title of the Thesis/Dissertation. Year Published. Name of University, type of degree.

MLA Thesis and Dissertation Citation Structure (online)

Last, First M.  Title of the Thesis/Dissertation. Year Published. Name of University, type of degree.  Website Name , URL.

Wilson, Peggy Lynn. Pedagogical Practices in the Teaching of English Language in Secondary Public Schools in Parker County . 2011. University of Maryland, PhD dissertation.

In-text Citation Structure

(Author Last Name page #)

In-text Citation Example

(Wilson 14)

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Published Dissertation or Thesis References

This page contains reference examples for published dissertations or theses.

Kabir, J. M. (2016). Factors influencing customer satisfaction at a fast food hamburger chain: The relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Publication No. 10169573) [Doctoral dissertation, Wilmington University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

Miranda, C. (2019). Exploring the lived experiences of foster youth who obtained graduate level degrees: Self-efficacy, resilience, and the impact on identity development (Publication No. 27542827) [Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University]. PQDT Open. https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/2309521814.html?FMT=AI

Zambrano-Vazquez, L. (2016). The interaction of state and trait worry on response monitoring in those with worry and obsessive-compulsive symptoms [Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona]. UA Campus Repository. https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/620615

• Parenthetical citations : (Kabir, 2016; Miranda, 2019; Zambrano-Vazquez, 2016)
• Narrative citations : Kabir (2016), Miranda (2019), and Zambrano-Vazquez (2016)
• A dissertation or thesis is considered published when it is available from a database such as ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global or PDQT Open, an institutional repository, or an archive.
• If the database assigns publication numbers to dissertations and theses, include the publication number in parentheses after the title of the dissertation or thesis without italics.
• Include the description “Doctoral dissertation” or “Master’s thesis” followed by a comma and the name of the institution that awarded the degree. Place this information in square brackets after the dissertation or thesis title and any publication number.
• In the source element of the reference, provide the name of the database, repository, or archive.
• The same format can be adapted for other published theses, including undergraduate theses, by changing the wording of the bracketed description as appropriate (e.g., “Undergraduate honors thesis”).
• Include a URL for the dissertation or thesis if the URL will resolve for readers (as shown in the Miranda and Zambrano-Vazquez examples).
• If the database or archive requires users to log in before they can view the dissertation or thesis, meaning the URL will not work for readers, end the reference with the database name (as in the Kabir example).

Published dissertation or thesis references are covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Section 10.6 and the Concise Guide Section 10.5

APA Style 6th Edition: Citing Your Sources

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Standard Format

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Dissertation or thesis available from a database service:

Author Surname, First Initial. Second Initial. (year of publication).  Title of dissertation or thesis (Doctoral dissertation or master’s thesis).  Retrieved from Name of database.  (Accession or Order No.)

For an unpublished dissertation or thesis:

Author Surname, First Initial. Second Initial. (year of creation).  Title of dissertation or thesis (Unpublished doctoral dissertation or master’s thesis).  Name of Institution, Location.

See Ch 7 pp. 207-208 APA Manual for more examples and formatting rules

Formatting:

• Italicize the title
• Identify whether source is doctoral dissertation or master’s thesis in parentheses after the title
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Format for dissertations and theses

Dissertations and theses database.

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Author last name, first initial. (Year).  Title of dissertation/thesis  (Publication No.) [Doctoral dissertation/Master's thesis, University]. Database. URL

• Author:  List the last name, followed by the first initial (and second initial). See  Authors  for more information.
• Year:  List the year between parentheses, followed by a period.
• Title of dissertation/thesis:  In italics. Capitalize the first word of the title, subtitle, and proper nouns.
• Publication number: Can be found in Dissertations and Theses database, listed in the item record as “Dissertation/thesis number.”
• Doctoral dissertation/Master's thesis:  List whether it is a dissertation or a thesis.
• University:  List the university associated with the dissertation/thesis.
• Database:  List database the dissertation/thesis was found in, if found in a database.
• URL:  List URL if found on the free Web rather than in a database.

See specific examples below.

Dissertations:

Pecore, J. T. (2004). Sounding the spirit of Cambodia: The living tradition of Khmer music and dance-drama in a Washington, DC community  (Publication No. 3114720) [Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. 

Master's Theses:

Hollander, M. M. (2017). Resitance to authority: Methodological innovations and new lessons from the Milgram experiment   (Publication No. 10289373) [Master's thesis, University of Wisconsin - Madison]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

APA calls for the citation to include a unique identifying number for the dissertation, labeling it “Publication No.” That number can be found in Dissertations and Theses database, listed in the item record as “Dissertation/thesis number.”

Karamanos, X. (2020). The influence of professional development models on student mathematics performance in New Jersey public elementary schools [Doctoral dissertation, Seton Hall University]. Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs). https://scholarship.shu.edu/dissertations/2732

Bordo, V. C. (2011). Making a case for the use of foreign language in the educational activities of nonprofit arts organizations [Master's thesis, University of Akron]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses & Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1311135640

Caprette, C. L. (2005). Conquering the cold shudder: The origin and evolution of snake eyes  [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University].

Angelova, A. N. (2004). Data pruning  [Master's thesis, California Institute of Technology].

See  Publication Manual , 10.6.

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Citation guides

All you need to know about citations

How to cite a PhD thesis in APA

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To cite a PhD thesis in a reference entry in APA style 6th edition include the following elements:

• Author(s) of the thesis: Give the last name and initials (e. g. Watson, J. D.) of up to seven authors with the last name preceded by an ampersand (&). For eight or more authors include the first six names followed by an ellipsis (…) and add the last author's name.
• Year of publication: Give the year in brackets followed by a full stop.
• Title of the PhD thesis: Only the first letter of the first word and proper nouns are capitalized.
• URL: Give the full URL where the document can be retrieved from.

Here is the basic format for a reference list entry of a PhD thesis in APA style 6th edition:

Author(s) of the thesis . ( Year of publication ). Title of the PhD thesis (PhD thesis). Retrieved from URL

If the thesis is available from a database, archive or any online platform use the following template:

• Author(s) of the thesis: Give the last name and initials (e. g. Watson, J. D.) of up to 20 authors with the last name preceded by an ampersand (&). For 21 or more authors include the first 19 names followed by an ellipsis (…) and add the last author's name.
• Publication number: Give the identification number of the thesis, if available.
• Name of the degree awarding institution: Give the name of the institution.
• Name of Platform: Give the name of the database, archive or any platform that holds the thesis.
• URL: If the thesis was found on a database, omit this element.

Here is the basic format for a reference list entry of a PhD thesis in APA style 7th edition:

Author(s) of the thesis . ( Year of publication ). Title of the PhD thesis ( Publication number ) [PhD thesis, Name of the degree awarding institution ]. Name of Platform . URL

If the thesis has not been published or is available from a database use the following template:

• Location: Give the location of the institution. If outside the United States also include the country name.

Author(s) of the thesis . ( Year of publication ). Title of the PhD thesis (Unpublished PhD thesis). Name of the degree awarding institution , Location .

If the thesis is not published, use the following template:

Author(s) of the thesis . ( Year of publication ). Title of the PhD thesis [Unpublished PhD thesis]. Name of the degree awarding institution .

APA reference list examples

Take a look at our reference list examples that demonstrate the APA style guidelines for a PhD thesis citation in action:

A PhD thesis found in an online platform

Confait, M. F . ( 2018 ). Maximising the contributions of PhD graduates to national development: The case of the Seychelles ( PhD thesis ). Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2060

Confait, M. F . ( 2018 ). Maximising the contributions of PHD graduates to national development: The case of the Seychelles [ PhD thesis , Edith Cowan University ]. Edith Cowan Online Repository . Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2060

An unpublished PhD thesis

Bowkett, D . ( 2015 ). Investigating the ligandability of plant homeodomains ( Unpublished PhD thesis ). University of Oxford , London, UK .

Bowkett, D . ( 2015 ). Investigating the ligandability of plant homeodomains [ Unpublished PhD thesis ]. University of Oxford .

This citation style guide is based on the official Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association ( 6 th edition).

More useful guides

• APA Referencing: Theses
• How do I reference a PhD dissertation or MA thesis in APA style?
• APA Citation Style: Theses and Dissertations

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What is a thesis?

What is a dissertation, getting started, staying on track.

A thesis is a long-term project that you work on over the course of a semester or a year. Theses have a very wide variety of styles and content, so we encourage you to look at prior examples and work closely with faculty to develop yours. 

Before you begin, make sure that you are familiar with the dissertation genre—what it is for and what it looks like.

Generally speaking, a dissertation’s purpose is to prove that you have the expertise necessary to fulfill your doctoral-degree requirements by showing depth of knowledge and independent thinking.

The form of a dissertation may vary by discipline. Be sure to follow the specific guidelines of your department.

• PhD This site directs candidates to the GSAS website about dissertations , with links to checklists,  planning, formatting, acknowledgments, submission, and publishing options. There is also a link to guidelines for the prospectus . Consult with your committee chair about specific requirements and standards for your dissertation.
• DDES This document covers planning, patent filing, submission guidelines, publishing options, formatting guidelines, sample pages, citation guidelines, and a list of common errors to avoid. There is also a link to guidelines for the prospectus .
• Scholarly Pursuits (GSAS) This searchable booklet from Harvard GSAS is a comprehensive guide to writing dissertations, dissertation-fellowship applications, academic journal articles, and academic job documents.

Finding an original topic can be a daunting and overwhelming task. These key concepts can help you focus and save time.

Finding a topic for your thesis or dissertation should start with a research question that excites or at least interests you. A rigorous, engaging, and original project will require continuous curiosity about your topic, about your own thoughts on the topic, and about what other scholars have said on your topic. Avoid getting boxed in by thinking you know what you want to say from the beginning; let your research and your writing evolve as you explore and fine-tune your focus through constant questioning and exploration.

Get a sense of the broader picture before you narrow your focus and attempt to frame an argument. Read, skim, and otherwise familiarize yourself with what other scholars have done in areas related to your proposed topic. Briefly explore topics tangentially related to yours to broaden your perspective and increase your chance of finding a unique angle to pursue.

Critical Reading

Critical reading is the opposite of passive reading. Instead of merely reading for information to absorb, critical reading also involves careful, sustained thinking about what you are reading. This process may include analyzing the author’s motives and assumptions, asking what might be left out of the discussion, considering what you agree with or disagree with in the author’s statements and why you agree or disagree, and exploring connections or contradictions between scholarly arguments. Here is a resource to help hone your critical-reading skills:

http://writing.umn.edu/sws/assets/pdf/quicktips/criticalread.pdf

Conversation

Your thesis or dissertation will incorporate some ideas from other scholars whose work you researched. By reading critically and following your curiosity, you will develop your own ideas and claims, and these contributions are the core of your project. You will also acknowledge the work of scholars who came before you, and you must accurately and fairly attribute this work and define your place within the larger discussion. Make sure that you know how to quote, summarize, paraphrase ,  integrate , and cite secondary sources to avoid plagiarism and to show the depth and breadth of your knowledge.

A thesis is a long-term, large project that involves both research and writing; it is easy to lose focus, motivation, and momentum. Here are suggestions for achieving the result you want in the time you have.

The dissertation is probably the largest project you have undertaken, and a lot of the work is self-directed. The project can feel daunting or even overwhelming unless you break it down into manageable pieces and create a timeline for completing each smaller task. Be realistic but also challenge yourself, and be forgiving of yourself if you miss a self-imposed deadline here and there.

Your program will also have specific deadlines for different requirements, including establishing a committee, submitting a prospectus, completing the dissertation, defending the dissertation, and submitting your work. Consult your department’s website for these dates and incorporate them into the timeline for your work.

Accountability

Sometimes self-imposed deadlines do not feel urgent unless there is accountability to someone beyond yourself. To increase your motivation to complete tasks on schedule, set dates with your committee chair to submit pre-determined pieces of a chapter. You can also arrange with a fellow doctoral student to check on each other’s progress. Research and writing can be lonely, so it is also nice to share that journey with someone and support each other through the process.

Common Pitfalls

The most common challenges for students writing a dissertation are writer’s block, information-overload, and the compulsion to keep researching forever.

There are many strategies for avoiding writer’s block, such as freewriting, outlining, taking a walk, starting in the middle, and creating an ideal work environment for your particular learning style. Pay attention to what helps you and try different things until you find what works.

Efficient researching techniques are essential to avoiding information-overload. Here are a couple of resources about strategies for finding sources and quickly obtaining essential information from them.

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/writing_in_literature_detailed_discussion/reading_criticism.html

https://students.dartmouth.edu/academic-skills/learning-resources/learning-strategies/reading-techniques

Finally, remember that there is always more to learn and your dissertation cannot incorporate everything. Follow your curiosity but also set limits on the scope of your work. It helps to create a folder entitled “future projects” for topics and sources that interest you but that do not fit neatly into the dissertation. Also remember that future scholars will build off of your work, so leave something for them to do.

Browsing through theses and dissertations of the past can help to get a sense of your options and gain inspiration but be careful to use current guidelines and refer to your committee instead of relying on these examples for form or formatting.

DASH Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard.

HOLLIS Harvard Library’s catalog provides access to ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global .

MIT Architecture has a list of their graduates’ dissertations and theses.

Rhode Island School of Design has a list of their graduates’ dissertations and theses.

University of South Florida has a list of their graduates’ dissertations and theses.

Harvard GSD has a list of projects, including theses and professors’ research.

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Quarto will use Pandoc to automatically generate citations and a bibliography in a number of styles. To use this capability, you will need:

A quarto document formatted with citations (see Citation Markdown ).

A bibliographic data source, for example a BibLaTeX ( .bib ) or BibTeX ( .bibtex ) file.

Optionally, a CSL file which specifies the formatting to use when generating the citations and bibliography (when not using natbib or biblatex to generate the bibliography).

Bibliography Files

Quarto supports bibliography files in a wide variety of formats including BibLaTeX and CSL. Add a bibliography to your document using the bibliography YAML metadata field. For example:

You can provide more than one bibliography file if you would like by setting the bibliography field’s value to a YAML array.

See the Pandoc Citations documentation for additional information on bibliography formats.

Citation Syntax

Quarto uses the standard Pandoc markdown representation for citations (e.g.  [@citation] ) — citations go inside square brackets and are separated by semicolons. Each citation must have a key, composed of ‘@’ + the citation identifier from the database, and may optionally have a prefix, a locator, and a suffix. The citation key must begin with a letter, digit, or _ , and may contain alphanumerics, _ , and internal punctuation characters ( :.#$%&-+?<>~/ ). Here are some examples:

You can also write in-text citations, as follows:

See the Pandoc Citations documentation for additional information on citation syntax.

Citation Style

Quarto uses Pandoc to format citations and bibliographies. By default, Pandoc will use the Chicago Manual of Style author-date format, but you can specify a custom formatting using CSL ( Citation Style Language ). To provide a custom citation stylesheet, provide a path to a CSL file using the csl metadata field in your document, for example:

You can find CSL files or learn more about using styles at the CSL Project . You can browse the list of more than 8,500 Creative Commons CSL definitions in the CSL Project’s central repository or Zotero’s style repository .

CSL styling is only available when the cite-method is citeproc (which it is by default). If you are using another cite-method , you can control the formatting of the references using the mechanism provided by that method.

Bibliography Generation

By default, Pandoc will automatically generate a list of works cited and place it in the document if the style calls for it. It will be placed in a div with the id refs if one exists:

If no such div is found, the works cited list will be placed at the end of the document.

If your bibliography is being generated using BibLaTeX or natbib ( Section 7 ), the bibliography will always appear at the end of the document and the #refs div will be ignored.

You can suppress generation of a bibliography by including suppress-bibliography: true option in your document metadata

Here’s an example of a generated bibliography:

Including Uncited Items

If you want to include items in the bibliography without actually citing them in the body text, you can define a dummy nocite metadata field and put the citations there:

In this example, the document will contain a citation for item3 only, but the bibliography will contain entries for item1 , item2 , and item3 .

It is possible to create a bibliography with all the citations, whether or not they appear in the document, by using a wildcard:

Using BibLaTeX or natbib

When creating PDFs, you can choose to use either the default Pandoc citation handling based on citeproc, or alternatively use natbib or BibLaTeX . This can be controlled using the cite-method option. For example:

The default is to use citeproc (Pandoc’s built in citation processor).

See the main article on using Citations with Quarto for additional details on citation syntax, available bibliography formats, etc.

When using natbib or biblatex you can specify the following additional options to affect how bibliographies are rendered:

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Why Is It So Hard to Get a Basic Question Answered About My IUD?

In the 1970s, a dangerous device hit the market. today, millions of women use iuds safely—but to many, they remain as mysterious as ever..

The nurse practitioner who inserted my IUD worked with the precision and speed of someone on a pit crew. Or, really—just someone working in the gynecology department of a student clinic at one of the largest universities in the U.S.

“You probably do a lot of these, huh?” I asked. She smiled.

For weeks, I had been dreading the appointment. A steady stream of friends who had endured the procedure before me had warned me it hurt. Still, they said, reliable, long-lasting birth control was worth it. Indeed, for a few seconds the procedure was excruciating—but it was over quickly.

“You’re good for five years,” the nurse told me as I left the exam room. It almost felt too good to be true.

It was, in fact, worth it. The little device fit into my life so seamlessly that I usually forgot it was there; having an IUD meant I almost never had to think about birth control. No more phone alarms for pills, or obnoxious trips to CVS. Aside from some occasional spotting, my periods stopped. Years passed. I graduated; I moved; I got engaged. The whole time, the device was in there, doing its thing.

This is the best-case scenario. But it is not the only one. Many women have severe pain during insertion. Why can’t I simply be knocked out for this process? they wonder. (It turns out, if you know who to ask, you can .) Others report negative side effects that they come to associate with their intrauterine device—acne, headaches, mood changes. Is this weird thing happening to my body because of my IUD? they ask. (In many cases, the answer is: Maybe.)

There are decades ’ worth of rigorous studies that validate the safety and efficacy of IUDs . Their message is quite clear: Adverse events happen, but severe ones are rare. Pregnancy with an IUD in place happens, but again, it is very rare. The IUD is, these studies show, a stellar form of birth control.

And yet: Many women regard the IUD as a sort of poltergeist, liable to mess with everything from their temper to their appearance. One co-worker swears that an IUD caused one of her eyebrows to fall out , though she can’t prove it. Another swears it was her IUD that was responsible for her partner getting repeated yeast infections on his penis. (One doctor told her it wasn’t related. Another said it could be . It turns out the device can carry a biofilm.) And finally, when even I, a person who loves her IUD, went to get it replaced five years in, I was baffled to find out that actually, it was now good for eight years. (Cool, but … how?)

It can be hard, as an individual woman, to access clear, compassionate answers to even seemingly basic questions about one’s IUD. On one of the online forums where women go to search for those answers: “It’s so frustrating that I have to go to Reddit,” one user recently wrote , “to figure out what other people experience.” Why, when it comes to a popular form of birth control, are women sometimes made to feel like we know so little?

IUDs were not initially designed for women. They were designed to manage women.

The development of the modern IUD is inextricably linked to the population control movement, as Chikako Takeshita documents in her book The Global Biopolitics of the IUD . In the 1950s, governments, international organizations, and wealthy funders began to fret over a “population explosion in the global South,” she writes. This, in their minds, could cause all sorts of problems: hunger, environmental destruction, political unrest, communism—all the way up to nuclear war. They needed to build a device that they could strategically deploy to ensure women, in certain areas, had fewer children.

One of the key organizations pushing forward the development of such a device was the Population Council, Takeshita writes. It awarded research grants to the physicians who developed some of the earliest models, funded the first long-term study on IUD efficacy, supported distribution of devices, and organized several international conferences focused on IUDs. As Takeshita notes, at the first such gathering in 1962, the conference chairman, Alan Guttmacher, discussed the need for a contraceptive for the “masses”: Existing methods, he said , “are largely birth control for the individual, not for a nation.”

The user’s experience in early IUD development was a secondary concern, an issue only insofar as a negative experience might cause a woman to have it removed. The first large-scale comparative study on the devices ran in the ’60s and involved tens of thousands of women testing five different types of IUDs— Lippes loops , Margulies spirals , Birnberg bows , steel rings , and double coils . The researchers evaluated IUDs in three areas: pregnancy prevention (they were OK at this, but not yet amazing), accidental expulsions, and removals. Reasons for removals were slotted into four categories: “bleeding/pain,” “other medical,” “planning pregnancy,” or “other personal.” “Other medical” branched off into several subcategories, including pelvic inflammatory disease, uterus perforation, and “discomfort to husband,” among others. The categories, though, offered little detail as to the more specific symptoms that led a woman to request removal.

“This,” Takeshita writes, “made it impossible to analyze the relationship between side effects and removal in detail.” In the early distribution of the IUD, the Population Council worried that “dissatisfied women” would spread “ adverse gossip ” about the devices.

Soon, though, they’d have good reason to. In 1971, a new IUD came on the contraception scene: the Dalkon Shield , which was made of plastic and looked like a cross between a beetle and a crab. The idea was that the legs would brace against the uterus and prevent accidental expulsions, which was a notable problem with the other devices that were at this point being offered in clinics across the U.S. The Dalkon Shield, the New York Times would later explain in its inventor Hugh Davis’ obituary, was “hailed as a scientific marvel, a highly improved intrauterine device … promising almost perfect birth control protection with virtually no adverse side effects.” In his 1971 book Intrauterine Devices for Contraception , Davis bragged about the device’s “pregnancy protection among young, highly fertile women”; he hypothesized that the plastic device’s large surface area and close contact with the uterus would boost its effectiveness.

But the Shield wasn’t just supposed to be better at blocking pregnancy. The manufacturer, A.H. Robins Company, marketed it as “the only IUD anatomically engineered for optimum uterine placement, fit, tolerance, and retention,” and dubbed it “the IUD that’s changing current thinking about contraceptives.” In a 1972 advertisement in an OB-GYN journal, the company bragged that the Shield (in contrast to the pill) had “no general effects on the body, blood, or brain” and allowed a woman to “throw away her calendars, charts, and dispensers.” You get the IUD, the ads said, and you are simply done having to think about your fertility. IUDs may have initially been designed for population control, but for the individual consumer, they came with clear perks.

Or so Robins claimed. In reality, the beetle/crab design proved to be shockingly dangerous. It could embed into the uterine wall, and caused a great deal of pain during insertion and removal. A 1985 article from the Washington Post cites a letter from a gynecologist to the device’s manufacturer in the weeks after it was first introduced: “I have just inserted my 10 th Dalkon Shield,” he wrote, “and have found that procedure to be the most traumatic manipulation ever perpetrated upon womanhood.” Some reports note that compared to other devices, inserting the Shield took “10 times more force.”

Still, the Shield quickly came to dominate the IUD market in the U.S. Three and a half years after its introduction, some 2.2 million women in America had a Shield inserted. All told, Takeshita notes, Robins sold around 4.5 million devices in 80 countries.

Meanwhile, though, reports of pelvic inflammatory disease , septic abortions , and uterine perforations, among other adverse events, became widespread. The clearest culprit was the string used to pull the device out: The Shield used multifilament string, which essentially had the effect of “wicking” bacteria up into the uterus, where it could cause dangerous infections.

Researchers point out that, in hindsight, there are likely multiple things that went wrong —the Shield was a poorly designed , relatively untested device with a high failure rate, and was aggressively marketed during the early ’70s, a period when sexually transmitted infections were on the rise and not adequately screened for. All of these factors contributed to a greater risk that bacteria ushered in via the Shield could cause dangerous infections and septic abortions. (The company, in response, focused on blaming women for risky sexual behavior and a lack of hygiene, attempting to muddle its responsibility by pointing to the fact that pelvic inflammatory disease does not require the presence of a bacteria-wicking device.) Robins stopped selling the devices in the U.S. in 1974, was hit with a wave of lawsuits, and later filed for bankruptcy. The company eventually set up a trust fund to handle claims against it; by the time it closed in 2000, according to the University of Virginia Law Library , the fund “paid out almost $3 billion to over 218,000 claimants.” The device was linked to at least 18 deaths, and tens of thousands of infections that in many cases led to infertility.

“If you asked me to try to sell an IUD to a woman in the early 1980s, I would have told you, ‘You’re crazy,’ ” Mary Jane Minkin, a gynecologist who served as a witness for Robins in some of the claims against the company, told me. A few other companies did, indeed, stop trying, and pulled their IUDs off the market.

But in parallel, the groundwork for a much different, much more reliable IUD landscape was being laid: In 1975, the Food and Drug Administration decided to require that manufacturers include patient labeling—a brochure with information about how the device works and potential risks—with the IUD, making it the third prescription product with such a requirement. In 1976, Congress established three different classes of medical devices, which, depending on their risk level, can require premarket approval from the FDA. Today’s IUDs are actually regulated not just as devices but as drugs (because of their hormones and copper), which means they go through extensive clinical testing and regulatory review to ensure their safety and efficacy. The Shield had gone through no such process—Robins took the device to market, the New York Times reported , based on “a yearlong test of 640 women” run by Davis, the device’s inventor.

By 2002, just 5.8 percent of heterosexually active, premenopausal women had ever used an IUD, and fewer than 2 percent were currently using one. The device was, nonetheless, going to make a stunning comeback.

Just before I entered college, in 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics decreed that IUDs and implants (like Implanon and Nexplanon) “should be considered first-line contraceptive choices for adolescents.” These devices were a far cry from the models of decades prior: much more effective, much safer , and much more tightly regulated. By the early 2010s, they had been around for a long time, and gynecologists had good reason to trust them deeply. The IUDs on the market in the U.S. are extremely effective ; IUD users who choose to keep their device through its life cycle report high satisfaction rates. In a recent round of data , which looked at 2015 to 2019, 1 in 5 sexually experienced women had used an IUD. On the list of most common primary contraceptives, the device ranks third—tied with condoms and behind female sterilization and the pill, according to 2018 data.

This new IUD world was headlined by two principal T-shaped stars, both of which had emerged in the aftermath of the Dalkon Shield fiasco. In 1984, the FDA approved the Paragard , which was covered in copper. Then there was a hormonal IUD, first introduced in Finland, loaded with 52 milligrams of progressively released levonorgestrel. That device, marketed in the U.S. as Mirena, was approved by the FDA in 2000 . And the Mirena and Paragard would later be joined by three other devices: the Skyla and Kyleena, smaller hormonal IUDs, and the Liletta, the functional equivalent of Mirena, developed by a nonprofit.

But the relationship many of us began to form with IUDs went beyond trusting them as a reliable form of birth control and into something else entirely. News organizations started to publish articles coronating the IUD as the “best” birth control. Some people began donning IUD jewelry . After the 2016 election, the president of Planned Parenthood g ave interviews saying there had been a 900 percent increase in women seeking IUDs at their clinics. One colleague told me she got an IUD because “it felt like the right thing to do.” Another said her college classmates used to joke that if you went to the campus health center with any ailment—a stubbed toe, a cold—you would walk out with an IUD.

At this juncture, IUDs were simultaneously a form of birth control and a symbol of bodily autonomy. They were also, maybe, a little bit of a prayer; once installed in our uteruses, we hoped they could protect us from the political whims of anyone in office who was trying to curtail our reproductive freedom. The IUD continues to be both a tool and a symbol: The day the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022 , there was a more than 375 percent increase in people scheduling appointments for IUD insertions at Planned Parenthood clinics. This year, a few weeks before the two-year anniversary of that decision, the advocacy group Americans for Contraception placed a 20-foot-tall inflatable IUD in front of Union Station in D.C. in an attempt to rally support for the Right to Contraception Act .

There are downsides to tasking medicine with doing so much. The combination of a device that is scientifically really good in a moment that is politically really scary in a sense magnetizes the IUD, pulling young women like me into line at the campus clinic, no questions asked. But that field of force also obscures an important truth: The IUD isn’t—and shouldn’t be—a blanket solution to protect everyone with a uterus through a tumultuous reproductive landscape. IUDs, like any medication, come with side effects, as well as unknowns. While modern IUDs are a far cry from the Dalkon Shield, they can still cause pain, uncertainty, and frustration.    

You can hear that frustration in conversations that women have—among friends, and even strangers, many of them on forums like Reddit. Earlier this year, one Redditor posted about migraines, anxiety, and mood swings that they worried were linked to their device. “I’ve never felt so bad and I’m wondering if [the] IUD potentially cause[d] me all that crap,” they wrote.

Someone else described constant bloating, weight gain, and a loss of libido after inserting a device a few weeks after giving birth. “I hit such a low, I fell into depression and barely want[ed] to look myself in the mirror,” they posted.

Another Redditor wrote about a doctor refusing to help them switch from hormonal birth control to a copper IUD: “he had this very concerned face of like ‘why the hell do you want this,’ ” they wrote. The doctor, they explained, was tired of people suddenly distrusting hormonal birth control.

This is a common dynamic: Doctors are frustrated with patients attributing various maladies to their IUDs (they are right; these days, it is hard to pin many specific complaints on the IUD itself). Patients are frustrated that their doctors won’t take their concerns seriously—or give them concrete answers. They, too, are right.

To understand the current science on modern IUDs, you have to understand how they work: in research terms, the mechanisms of action. In basic terms, hormonal IUDs—the Liletta, Mirena, Kyleena, and Skyla—release a small amount of progestin, whose primary effect is to thicken cervical mucus, effectively putting a wall up in front of the sperm. Copper IUDs—just one is approved in the U.S., the Paragard—release spermicidal copper ions. (Sperm, bless those little guys, aren’t very hardy.)

Beyond the specific effects of hormones and copper, the mere fact of having something foreign in the uterus provides at least some contraception. IUDs of yore, like the Lippes loop and Dalkon Shield, were just plastic—what researchers call “inert devices.” David Hubacher, a senior epidemiologist at FHI 360, told me to think about what happens when you get a splinter in your finger: The body recognizes it’s not supposed to be there and reacts accordingly. To the uterus, the IUD is a sort of splinter; its presence triggers an inflammatory response that, once again, isn’t good for the sperm.

The most desirable outcome of all this is consistent pregnancy prevention—the health consequences of unwanted pregnancy are dire and often deadly. But studies also suggest that a meaningful proportion of users will experience side effects while using an IUD to achieve that end. A portion of these may be desirable—many (though certainly not all) women are thrilled that their hormonal IUD reduces or stops menstrual bleeding. Around 20 percent of women experience no bleeding or spotting by the end of their first year with a 52-milligram hormonal IUD, a rate that goes up over time. (The Mirena is FDA-approved to treat heavy menstrual bleeding.) There are also adverse effects: Some of the most prevalent, when it comes to hormonal devices , are breast pain or tenderness, abdominal pain, acne, and headaches. Copper IUDs are associated with irregular or heavy bleeding, and cramping. (The most robust research we have on IUDs and their side effects, it’s important to note, is funded by the pharma companies who manufacture them.)

But how common are these problems? It’s thorny to definitively say, which is partly because determining causation can be difficult. It’s particularly tricky here because contraception is just harder to study than many other medications. You’re trying to prevent something from happening over the course of several years, and the stakes are incredibly high. “The consequence of a blood pressure medication failing is I stop you on the study and I give you something we know works,” Mitchell Creinin, the researcher in charge of overseeing the Liletta clinical trial, told me. “The consequence of a birth control method failing is you have a life-changing event.” As a result, trials with the devices almost never involve placebos: People enroll in these studies because they want to prevent pregnancy, and you can’t leave that outcome up to the flip of a coin.

One of the things that further complicates decisionmaking around birth control—and the research itself—is that any downsides, even hints thereof, can be politically weaponized. Take, for example, the potential link between hormonal birth control and depression and mood disorders. As Christina Cauterucci has written for Slate , conservative advocacy organizations and influencers—whose rather transparent endgame is to restrict access to contraception —have taken up arms against hormonal birth control, which they say “disrespects women.” In February, Elon Musk tweeted that hormonal birth control “makes you fat, doubles risk of depression & triples risk of suicide,” linking to a six-year-old write-up of a 2016 study from Danish researchers.

The study , which spanned 14 years and was published in JAMA Psychiatry, tracked more than one million women between the ages of 15 and 34, about half of whom were current or recent users of hormonal birth control. Using personal identification numbers and public databases, researchers were able to match the records of contraceptive prescriptions with records that tracked depression diagnoses and antidepressant prescriptions. When they parsed the data, they found that using hormonal birth control “was positively associated with a subsequent use of antidepressants and a diagnosis of depression.” In 2018, the researchers published another study , using the same databases, which tied hormonal contraceptive use to a higher risk of suicide. In a study published earlier this year in the Lancet, researchers used the Danish records to compare different hormonal IUD models and found that lower-dose hormonal IUDs carried a lower risk of depression than their 52-mg counterpart.

At the time, the 2016 study generated all sorts of headlines . “Birth control is turning women into hormonal messes,” the New York Post declared. But the strength of this finding is controversial : As with other treatment-emergent adverse events, it’s hard to pinpoint in which cases hormonal contraceptives like the IUD caused depression, and other studies have mixed—or even opposite— results. The benefit of the Danish study is that it’s really big; the downside is that it’s not very precise. “Often you have to take each study as a piece of the puzzle, and as we go along we get a better picture of what the puzzle is going to look like,” OB-GYN Jennifer Gunter told STAT at the time. She added that it was “really important not to sound alarms based on individual puzzle pieces.”

Slowly—as women have gotten IUDs in, gotten them out, and been desperate for answers along the way—researchers have been attempting to build out that puzzle. A 2022 review of research on the connection between hormonal IUDs and psychiatric symptoms, published in the World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, found 10 studies that pointed to an increased risk for depression among hormonal IUD users, two that found a decreased risk, and two that showed no connection.

Ultimately, the researchers concluded that “despite unreliable data … counselling patients about these risks should be mandatory.” They also pointed out that depression is a “multifactorial disease”—and any effects from the hormonal IUD should be taken as part of a larger equation.

The wishy-washyness of this picture, and the time it has taken to come together, isn’t a conspiracy, nor is it a reason to restrict or shame use of birth control. Jeffrey Jensen, who has done studies looking at the cortisol concentrations in hormonal IUD users’ hair to track stress over time ( they found no adverse impact ), told me he thought the data was pretty clear: Most women will not experience behavioral side effects from IUDs, but some women will. Clinical studies bear that out. “There’s a subset of the population, and we don’t understand the genetics of these individuals or how to screen for them, but they typically have a worse experience,” said Jensen, who has also led clinical research on the Mirena.

Jensen does think that, in future decades, genetic research could help us predict who will do best with the device. Kavita Nanda, the director of medical research at FHI 360, told me her organization is seeking funding to conduct pharmacogenetic testing during some of their standard contraceptive trials, which could help researchers assess whether genetic variations are associated with differences in, for example, bleeding patterns or contraceptive efficacy. Still, funding is hard to come by. Nanda sent me a PowerPoint slide she likes to share that compares annual global investment in contraceptive R&D —which includes government, industry, and foundation dollars—with how much Americans spend yearly on Halloween costumes for their pets: $117 million to develop better contraceptives; around $700 million to dress dogs up as pumpkins, hot dogs, and bumblebees.

Where does this leave the patient, who is having an IUD whisked—or maybe it feels more like wrenched —into her during a brief appointment?

In an ideal world, providers might sort through each new study about side effects, length of efficacy, and pain management themselves, summing up what they’ve learned, each potential if relatively uncommon downside, before completing an insertion.

In our world, providers are stretched thin, and don’t have time to digest such a complicated, evolving body of research, let alone hold summits with patients to process what it means.

Across gynecology, there’s a larger movement toward person-centered counseling , which requires providers take the time to understand what’s important for a patient in their contraceptive decisionmaking, to fully explain all options on the table, and to support and respect them throughout the process. This means giving patients more time with providers who ask more—and better—questions. It’s hard to predict how someone will do with a contraceptive in the future, but the past can certainly hold clues. For a clinician to help me make an informed decision, they need to understand how my body has reacted to other contraceptives, and what’s important to me going forward. They also need to understand why I’m seeking a contraceptive—is it to prevent pregnancy? To manage heavy menstrual bleeding or another condition? To seek relief from symptoms of perimenopause? They can use that information to lay out which contraceptives might be a good match for my needs, while always leaving the decision in my hands.

In many ways, this is a movement to shift contraceptive counseling from population-level concerns to individual ones. There’s a lot of harm to correct for , including numerous present-day examples of contraceptive coercion , especially among patients of color. “Whether it’s subtle or not, Black women are often encouraged to choose long-acting reversible contraception,” Regina Davis Moss, president of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, told me. In focus groups conducted by In Our Own Voice, Black women shared they were consistently not listened to or trusted by clinicians; they felt they couldn’t rely on their providers for complete information, including about side effects; and they had to do their own research. Women also reported facing provider resistance when they sought to remove an IUD.

As I read through the studies I saved on my computer as part of my research for this article, I often wanted to slam my head into the table. The science we have is quite good, but it’s also complicated and underfunded, and it takes time for it to trickle down to clinicians .

Further, some of those clinicians are worried that spreading negative information about the IUD—even the idea that you might, maybe, have some bad side effects—could both discourage women from seeking out contraceptives and be  weaponized  by those who want to restrict access more broadly. I understand this fear. But the same fear can translate into a dismissiveness that ultimately makes things worse. If we should indeed be gearing up for a  war against contraceptives , women need to understand and feel served by what they’re fighting for. Ultimately, the fact that birth control is imperfect means that we need more choices. Not fewer.

Studies since at least the 1990s have concluded that when people are given information about what an IUD might do to, say, their bleeding patterns, they’re ultimately more satisfied with the device. In other words, when people have the data to make informed choices , they’re happier with those choices. Some researchers might shake their heads at this, pointing to a potential “nocebo” effect—basically the placebo effect in reverse, the idea being that if you tell someone about all the bad side effects that might happen to them, they’ll be more likely to report experiencing those side effects. But this is ultimately a paternalistic concern: If we want birth control for an individual, that individual needs a real seat at the table.

There’s a dangerous tendency to see research as separate from women’s experiences with the IUD—informing it from above, but not integral to it. We know that the modern iterations of the IUD are safe and effective, so we tell women so. We should continue doing that. But we should also tell them what we don’t know, what we’re still studying. We should encourage them to keep asking questions, and to be a part of the process of looking for an answer.

This article was produced in collaboration with ASU Media Enterprise.

Democrats are talking about replacing Joe Biden. That wouldn't be so easy.

President Joe Biden's performance in the first debate Thursday has sparked a new round of criticism from Democrats , as well as public and private musing about whether he should remain at the top of the ticket.

In the modern era, a national party has never tried to adversarially replace its nominee, in part, because knows it would most likely fail. The issue came before both parties in 2016, but neither took action.

Party rules make it almost impossible to replace nominees without their consent, let alone smoothly replace them with someone else. And doing so would amount to party insiders’ overturning the results of primaries when Democratic voters overwhelmingly to nominate Biden. He won almost 99% of all delegates.

And at the moment, there’s no known, serious effort to push him off the top of the ticket.

Still, the Democratic National Committee's charter does make some provisions in case the party’s nominee is incapacitated or opts to step aside, and an anti-Biden coup at the convention is theoretically possible, if highly unlikely. So how would it work?

What happens if Biden drops out before the convention?

The only plausible scenario for Democrats to get a new nominee would be for Biden to decide to withdraw, which he has sworn off repeatedly during other bumpy stretches of his campaign.  

He could do so while serving out the rest of his term in the White House, as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968. 

If Biden were to drop out before he is scheduled to be formally nominated in August, it would create a free-for-all among Democrats, because there’s no mechanism for him or anyone else to anoint a chosen successor.

It takes a majority of the roughly 4,000 pledged delegates to win the party’s nomination. Biden’s won 3,900 of them. Under recent reforms, the party’s more than 700 superdelegates — Democratic lawmakers and dignitaries — are allowed to vote only if no one wins a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, so their votes could be crucial in a contested convention. 

Because Biden's opponents all won effectively no delegates throughout the Democratic nominating process, there'd be a virtual clean slate heading into the convention, and the decision would most likely come down to the convention delegates who were initially pledged to Biden.

Biden would have some influence over his pledged delegates, but ultimately, they can vote as they please, so candidates would most likely campaign aggressively to win over each individual delegate.

However, there's a potentially important wrinkle: Democrats plan to formally nominate Biden virtually ahead of the late-August convention to sidestep any potential concerns about ballo t access in Ohio, where a technical quirk has complicated things

Democrats decided to plan a virtual nomination for Biden after Ohio Republicans balked at passing pro forma legislation that would allow Biden to be on the ballot, even though the convention falls after a state deadline. But while Republicans passed a law to shift the deadline, Democrats decided to move forward with a virtual nomination nonetheless.

Could Democrats replace Biden against his will?

There’s no evidence the party would entertain a change without Biden’s consent. But even if it did, there’s no mechanism for it to replace a candidate before the convention, and certainly no way for it to anoint a chosen successor.

If large swaths of the Democratic Party lost faith in Biden, delegates to the national convention could theoretically defect en masse. Of course, they were chosen to be delegates because of their loyalty to Biden and have pledged to support him at the convention.

But, unlike many Republican delegates, Democratic delegates aren’t technically bound to their candidate. DNC rules allow delegates to “in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them,” providing some wiggle room.

The party’s charter does include provisions to replace the nominee in the event of a vacancy. The measure is intended to be used in case of death, resignation or incapacitation, not to replace someone who has no desire to step down.

That was the measure that Donna Brazile, then the interim DNC chair, considered invoking after Hillary Clinton collapsed two months before the 2016 election, she wrote in her memoir .

In her memoir, released a year later, Brazile wrote that she was worried “not just about Hillary’s health but about her anemic campaign ... so lacking in the spirit of fight.” 

“Perhaps changing the candidate was a chance to win this thing, to change the playing field in a way that would send Donald Trump scrambling and unable to catch up,” she wrote, adding that aides to other would-be candidates contacted her, including then-Vice President Biden’s chief of staff.

But after less than 24 hours of consideration, Brazile realized the idea was untenable without Clinton’s cooperation and likely to only divide her party further. “I could not make good on my threat to replace her," she wrote.

Current DNC Chair Jaime Harrison is a longtime Biden ally who serves, essentially, at the pleasure of the president. And the national party has certainly given no indication it’s anything but fully behind his re-election.  

What happens if Biden withdraws after the convention?

To fill a vacancy on the national ticket, the chair can call a “special meeting” of the full DNC, which includes about 500 members. On paper, at least, all it takes is a majority vote of those present to pick new presidential and vice presidential nominees. But that process would most likely be anything but smooth and be filled with behind-the-scenes jockeying and public pressure campaigns. 

If a vacancy were to occur close to the November election, however, it could raise constitutional, legal and practical concerns. Among other issues, ballots have to be printed well in advance of the election, and it might not be possible to change them in time.

Would Kamala Harris replace Biden?

If Biden were to relinquish the presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris would automatically become president — but not the Democratic Party’s nominee. Nor would she necessarily be the nominee if Biden withdrew from his re-election bid while he remained in the White House.

She might be politically favored, but party rules give the vice president no major mechanical benefit over other candidates. 

Biden’s delegates wouldn’t automatically transfer to Harris, and the convention holds separate votes on nominees for president and vice president. So she would still need to win a majority of delegates at the convention. 

If the top of the ticket were vacated after the convention, she would still need to win a majority of votes at the special meeting of the DNC.

That is all, at least, under current party rules. But a vacancy at the top of the ticket is the kind of dramatic moment that might lead party leaders to revisit them in the name of easing the transition. Harris has some close allies in key places at the DNC, including a co-chair of the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. But nothing would be likely to happen without a fight.

Ben Kamisar is a national political reporter for NBC News.

Alex Seitz-Wald is a senior politics reporter for NBC News.

Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

Only about 1 in 10 transactions involve physical money, says recent report.

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A consumer group is urgently calling on the federal government to follow other jurisdictions in the U.S and Europe and bring in legislation to stem the slide toward a cashless society.

Only 10 per cent of transactions in Canada today are done using cash, according to Carlos Castiblanco, an economist with the group Option Consommateurs.

"There is a need to protect cash right now before more merchants start refusing [it]," Castiblanco recently told  CBC Radio's  Ontario Today.

It's critical to act now, he added, before retailers begin removing all of the infrastructure required to store and maintain physical money.

"They are already used to dealing with cash," he said. "So this is the moment to act, before it is more complicated."

In a report called  "Will cash be a thing of the past?" , Option Consommateurs published one of the first deep dives into who is still using coins and paper money.

'Solid demand' for cash

A recent online poll of some 1,500 people  commissioned by a different group, Payments Canada, found that a majority of respondents were worried about the prospect of cashless stores and want to maintain the option to use cash — which is free from bank fees, isn't susceptible to privacy breaches and can be used during internet outages.

"There's still very solid demand for cash," Sharon Kozicki, the deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, said in a recent interview with CBC.

The bank closely tracks how money gets used, she said, with the use of cash actually rising at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While that growth has slowed, Kozicki said there's still an "overall general increase that suggests people still want it."

Even a report commissioned by the Bank of Canada suggests it's time to protect access to money.

• Paying with a credit card? Expect to see a fee when you shop under new rules that start now
• Backlash against cashless stores as more U.S. jurisdictions require businesses to accept bills

That report, titled "Social policy implications for a less-cash society," recommends legislative action, arguing that cash-based transactions have plummeted from 54 per cent in 2009 to 10 per cent as of 2021.

One of its authors, Aftab Ahmed, described who would be most affected by a world with no cash in a recent article in Policy Options , the online magazine for the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

"For many — such as Indigenous peoples, unhoused individuals, older Canadians, victims of domestic abuse and others who are vulnerable — cash is a beacon of economic security, a source of financial autonomy, an emergency lifeline and an emblem of cultural traditions," Ahmed wrote.

"Canada must avoid sleepwalking into a cashless future and instead recognize the risk of exacerbating financial exclusion of those most vulnerable."

Other cities, countries taking steps

The issue has caught fire outside Canada, Castiblanco said, with several jurisdictions beginning to legislate to protect access to cash.

In 2019, Philadelphia became the first city in North America to prohibit "a person selling or offering for sale consumer goods or services at retail from refusing to accept cash as a form of payment."

Other U.S. cities, including New York, Seattle and Los Angeles, have since moved ahead on the issue.

In New York, the regulation proposes fines of up to $1,500, with the councillor who sponsored the rules declaring that a ban on cashless businesses protects privacy, equity and consumer choice.

European countries like Norway, Spain, and Ireland have introduced similar laws. In Ireland, the law would require a cash option at businesses like pharmacies and grocery stores that sell essential products and services.

'We need urgent action now'

Consumer groups in the United Kingdom such as Payment Choice Alliance are pushing that country to follow Ireland's model.

"I think that we need urgent action now," the alliance's spokesperson, Ron Delnevo, told  Ontario Today.

The group is calling for new rules in the U.K. by the end of 2025.

"We feel if it goes beyond that, there [will be] so many businesses not accepting cash," Delnevo said. "Cash will be so difficult to access that the whole [cash-based system] will fall down."

Delnevo said Canadians can take a lesson on the power of consumer action in his country.

"MPs in our Parliament have been inundated with mail from the public, and they are reacting to that," he said. "So don't let the politicians put their hands over their ears and not listen. Tell them what you want."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amanda Pfeffer has worked for the CBC across the country, including Montreal, Vancouver, Fredericton, Quebec City and Ottawa. She welcomes story ideas and tips at [email protected], or twitter @onthebeat1.

• Read more articles by Amanda Pfeffer

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IT University of Copenhagen

Malmö University

LISN-Université Paris Saclay

Northeastern University

• SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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😕 What is a Works Cited Generator?

A works cited generator is a tool that automatically creates a works cited page in the Modern Language Association (MLA) citation format. The generator will take in information about the sources you have cited in your paper, such as document titles, authors, and URLs, and will output a fully formatted works cited page that can be added to the end of your paper (just as your teacher asked!).

The citations included in a Works Cited page show the sources that you used to construct your argument in the body of your school paper, either directly as references and quotes, or indirectly as ideas.

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Students in middle school and high school will usually be expected to produce a works cited page to accompany their academic papers. Therefore, they will generally be the users of a works cited generator.

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Using our Works Cited Generator is so easy. Every time you cite a source in your paper, just come back to the generator at the top of this page and enter the source you are citing. Our generator can cite books, journal articles, and webpages automatically, and can cite over 30 other sources if you enter the source details manually.

Save each source to your bibliography, then when you have finished writing your paper just click the 'download' button and the generator will produce a formatted Works Cited page that can be copied and pasted directly to the end of your document.

Daniel is a qualified librarian, former teacher, and citation expert. He has been contributing to MyBib since 2018.

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Why I’m Never Carrying A Laptop Again After Switching To A Tablet

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After running between meetings at various New York City locations in a single day earlier this summer, I returned home with a sore shoulder. I knew the culprit: my heavy, bulky beast of a laptop. I decided it was time to make some changes to my mobile workstation given the frequency of my out-of-office meetings as the consumer tech editor at Forbes Vetted. Why carry a laptop when I could cut down on the weight and bulk I was toting around—and still complete my tasks? I swapped my laptop for the Google Pixel Tablet and an extra lightweight, new Logitech keyboard and mouse.

Swapping my laptop for a tablet to work on the go outside of my home office was more than doable ... [+] with the addition of a few accessories.

This trio makes for a great portable work setup to take with you for the day if you have a similarly packed out-of-office schedule. The Google Pixel has strong word processing capabilities and gives me access to all my much-needed apps and browsers. With the addition of the keyboard and mouse, it feels nearly like a full-size desktop computer with some caveats. Everything syncs up, so I can write stories, take meetings and more. Here’s the gear I carry as a tech editor—and why you might consider a similar setup to relieve that laptop-toting ache in your shoulder.

Casper Vs. Nectar: Which Popular Foam Mattress Suits You Better?

The best wayfair outdoor furniture deals to shop this weekend, google pixel tablet, a lightweight, powerful tablet, google pixel tablet (256gb).

The Google Pixel Tablet is a portable powerhouse, and my tablet of choice. It weighs just over a pound and has a bright 10.9-inch LCD screen. I have plenty of space for writing in Google Docs, reviewing spreadsheets and taking meetings. I use the Nulaxy phone stand to prop the tablet up at a coffee shop, event venue and more.

My Dell Latitude 7430 laptop weighs just under 3 pounds, but also takes up more space in my bag. The tablet easily fits into one of my favorite leather purses instead of my hefty, less stylish backpack. And there’s still room in my purse for a couple of key accessories to complete my workstation, as well as other personal essentials.

The Pixel’s battery is strong; I don’t find I need to charge it at all for a full day of work. The only downside is that it doesn’t offer LTE network compatibility, so you’ll need to connect to Wi-Fi to access many of your apps.

The Google Pixel Tablet's versatility and portability make it an essential piece of my mobile ... [+] workstation setup.

If you absolutely need LTE, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE also works, though you’ll still feel the heft of the tablet. You can also use an Apple iPad (10th Gen) or iPad Mini (Sixth Gen) for a similar setup. I’m primarily an Android user, so I opted to stay in that ecosystem. The Pixel Tablet’s lightweight build, big screen and long battery life make this a must-have for my portable setup. When I’m not on the move, I dock it at home where it doubles as my smart home assistant.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5

Part phone, part tablet.

Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense to even pack a tablet, especially if you’re constantly on the move, have frequent meetings or simply don’t need it for this particular workday. On days like this, I pack my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 . It’s a smartphone that unfolds into a 7.6-inch tablet. For a mobile device, that’s a lot of space. I add a case with the S Pen and use Samsung Notes to jot down notes during briefings and events, which I find really handy.

Because it has apps like Google Docs, Monday and more, I can pair this smartphone with the Logitech Keys-To-Go 2 keyboard to create a mighty mini PC (with LTE capability) in a pinch. It’s not a perfect layout, and I find I miss that extra 3 inches of display real estate. When using the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, you’ll want to pack a portable charger, too, which can add bulk. The battery is solid but expect the display to reduce it throughout the day. Overall, I find it a great option in a pinch—or when I don’t want to carry the larger Pixel Tablet.

Logitech Keys-To-Go 2

A portable keyboard to pair with your tablet.

Logitech just launched this new iteration of its portable keyboard, and I’ve quickly grown impressed with the Keys-To-Go 2 . The device feels nearly weightless at just 0.4 pounds, and it’s very responsive when typing. I’ve used it in both scenarios outlined here with the Pixel Tablet and with the Galaxy Z Fold 5.

The recently launched Logitech Keys-To-Go 2 is extremely lightweight and can connect to multiple ... [+] devices simultaneously.

I can connect it to up to three devices at once. If I need to hop on Slack and quickly type out a message, I can connect it not only to my Pixel Tablet, but also to my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 and my laptop, swapping Bluetooth connections with the tap of a button.

It takes coin cell batteries—one of my only gripes about this device—but the battery lasts for three years, so there’s no need to worry about plugging it in for a recharge. Choose from lovely shades of Lilac, Pale Grey and Graphite (I’ve been digging rainbow colorways in tech products and opted for the Lilac). It’s a little steep in price at around $80, but I found it worth the cost to save on weight in my bag and given how easily it blends into my mobile setup.

Logitech Lift Vertical Ergonomic Mouse

A mini vertical mouse.

The Logitech Lift Vertical Ergonomic Mouse takes the classic mouse design and adds a vertical ergonomic component to reduce wrist strains and pains. My hypermobility caused similar issues a few years back for me, and it’s one of the reasons I’m especially particular about the tech I use daily. I ordered this ergonomic mouse to see if it would help with those aches, and to my absolute delight, it did. It’s so crucial in my daily routine that two years later, I’ve ditched all other mice.

While even the best ergonomic mice can feel bulky, this Logitech Lift fits small- to medium-sized hands. It features an adjustable DPI (dots per inch, or the mouse’s sensitivity), so I can customize how quickly the mouse responds to my movements. In the entire two years I’ve owned this mouse, I replaced the single AA battery once. Like the Keys-To-Go 2, the bottom has three Bluetooth connections available (you can also use an included dongle), and I can connect to my devices with the press of a button. Even pairing a new device is easy: Press and hold the designated button until the LED light flashes.

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones

Tune out the world while you work.

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones are our pick for the best noise-canceling headphones , the best wireless headphones and more—and all for good reason. The noise-canceling technology in these headphones is the best on the market. I can take virtual meetings in noisy settings and hear clearly. There have been moments when I’m wearing the headphones, and I don’t even realize someone is speaking to me until I’m tapped on the shoulder.

It also comes with a massive battery life that trumps even the best wireless earbuds at up to 20 hours. That means that even when I rush out the door and forget to charge them, I don’t have to worry. I’ve also found that a quick 15-minute charge from any power source provides three hours of playback. I also like that they come in a gorgeous White Smoke color. They’re one of the pricier wireless headphones on the market, but I can’t imagine packing any other pair when working in noisy settings.

These are all my essentials for setting up a portable, lighter and more mobile workstation.

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Congratulations are in order for Mr. and Mrs. Christian McCaffrey.

The star San Fransisco 49ers running back married Sports Illustrated Swimsuit alum Olivia Culpo in her native Rhode Island on Saturday, as seen in photos by Vogue posted on Instagram.

Culpo, who announced her engagement to McCaffrey, 27, last April, wore a gorgeous long-sleeve crepe crew neck ball gown, which she previously said she spent months designing.

“I wanted it to feel timeless, effortless, and as if it’s complimenting me, not overpowering me,” she told Vogue on Saturday.

Leading up to the big day, Culpo spilled some details about what she and McCaffrey had planned for the nuptials .

“I know for sure we’re not going to do a first look, so he won’t see me until I’m walking down the aisle, I think that that’s a little less common these days,” the former Miss Universe winner, 32, told People in May.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Olivia Frances Culpo (@oliviaculpo)

Culpo and McCaffrey enjoyed a number of pre-wedding festivities with family in May, as seen in  photos and videos she shared on Instagram .

The model and influencer took in a bridal weekend with her sister, Sophia Culpo, and best friend Kristen Louelle, according to her Instagram Story.

The group received the VIP treatment at Ambassade Biologique Recherche Los Angeles, a high-end spa that specializes in personalized treatments for the face, body and scalp.

“Let the pampering begin,” Culpo wrote.

That same month, Culpo was thrown her “dream” bridal shower in Malibu.

“Thank you @isabelalysa for the most beautiful bridal shower and to everyone who made the day so special!!!” she posted on Instagram at the time.

Culpo celebrated her bachelorette party  in Cabo last November with  her sisters and best friends — including Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2023 cover model Brooks Nader.

McCaffrey and Culpo’s engagement party took place in Rhode Island last July.

The reigning Offensive Player of the Year proposed  to Culpo after nearly four years of dating.

McCaffrey presented the then-bride-to-be with a stunning oval-cut engagement ring with side stones designed by  New York-based jeweler Ring Concierge .

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• Citing sources

How to Cite Sources | Citation Generator & Quick Guide

Citing your sources is essential in  academic writing . Whenever you quote or paraphrase a source (such as a book, article, or webpage), you have to include a  citation crediting the original author.

Failing to properly cite your sources counts as plagiarism , since you’re presenting someone else’s ideas as if they were your own.

The most commonly used citation styles are APA and MLA. The free Scribbr Citation Generator is the quickest way to cite sources in these styles. Simply enter the URL, DOI, or title, and we’ll generate an accurate, correctly formatted citation.

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When do you need to cite sources, which citation style should you use, in-text citations, reference lists and bibliographies.

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Citation examples and full guides, frequently asked questions about citing sources.

Citations are required in all types of academic texts. They are needed for several reasons:

• To avoid plagiarism by indicating when you’re taking information from another source
• To give proper credit to the author of that source
• To allow the reader to consult your sources for themselves

A citation is needed whenever you integrate a source into your writing. This usually means quoting or paraphrasing:

• To quote a source , copy a short piece of text word for word and put it inside quotation marks .
• To paraphrase a source , put the text into your own words. It’s important that the paraphrase is not too close to the original wording. You can use the paraphrasing tool if you don’t want to do this manually.

Citations are needed whether you quote or paraphrase, and whatever type of source you use. As well as citing scholarly sources like books and journal articles, don’t forget to include citations for any other sources you use for ideas, examples, or evidence. That includes websites, YouTube videos , and lectures .

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Usually, your institution (or the journal you’re submitting to) will require you to follow a specific citation style, so check your guidelines or ask your instructor.

In some cases, you may have to choose a citation style for yourself. Make sure to pick one style and use it consistently:

• APA Style is widely used in the social sciences and beyond.
• MLA style is common in the humanities.
• Chicago notes and bibliography , common in the humanities
• Chicago author-date , used in the (social) sciences
• There are many other citation styles for different disciplines.

If in doubt, check with your instructor or read other papers from your field of study to see what style they follow.

In most styles, your citations consist of:

• Brief in-text citations at the relevant points in the text
• A reference list or bibliography containing full information on all the sources you’ve cited

In-text citations most commonly take the form of parenthetical citations featuring the last name of the source’s author and its year of publication (aka author-date citations).

An alternative to this type of in-text citation is the system used in numerical citation styles , where a number is inserted into the text, corresponding to an entry in a numbered reference list.

There are also note citation styles , where you place your citations in either footnotes or endnotes . Since they’re not embedded in the text itself, these citations can provide more detail and sometimes aren’t accompanied by a full reference list or bibliography.

A reference list (aka “Bibliography” or “Works Cited,” depending on the style) is where you provide full information on each of the sources you’ve cited in the text. It appears at the end of your paper, usually with a hanging indent applied to each entry.

The information included in reference entries is broadly similar, whatever citation style you’re using. For each source, you’ll typically include the:

• Author name
• Publication date
• Container (e.g., the book an essay was published in, the journal an article appeared in)
• Location (e.g., a URL or DOI , or sometimes a physical location)

The exact information included varies depending on the source type and the citation style. The order in which the information appears, and how you format it (e.g., capitalization, use of italics) also varies.

Most commonly, the entries in your reference list are alphabetized by author name. This allows the reader to easily find the relevant entry based on the author name in your in-text citation.

In numerical citation styles, the entries in your reference list are numbered, usually based on the order in which you cite them. The reader finds the right entry based on the number that appears in the text.

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Because each style has many small differences regarding things like italicization, capitalization , and punctuation , it can be difficult to get every detail right. Using a citation generator can save you a lot of time and effort.

Scribbr offers citation generators for both APA and MLA style. Both are quick, easy to use, and 100% free, with no ads and no registration required.

Just input a URL or DOI or add the source details manually, and the generator will automatically produce an in-text citation and reference entry in the correct format. You can save your reference list as you go and download it when you’re done, and even add annotations for an annotated bibliography .

Once you’ve prepared your citations, you might still be unsure if they’re correct and if you’ve used them appropriately in your text. This is where Scribbr’s other citation tools and services may come in handy:

Plagiarism Checker

Citation Checker

Citation Editing

Plagiarism means passing off someone else’s words or ideas as your own. It’s a serious offense in academia. Universities use plagiarism checking software to scan your paper and identify any similarities to other texts.

When you’re dealing with a lot of sources, it’s easy to make mistakes that could constitute accidental plagiarism. For example, you might forget to add a citation after a quote, or paraphrase a source in a way that’s too close to the original text.

Using a plagiarism checker yourself before you submit your work can help you spot these mistakes before they get you in trouble. Based on the results, you can add any missing citations and rephrase your text where necessary.

Try out the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker for free, or check out our detailed comparison of the best plagiarism checkers available online.

Scribbr Plagiarism Checker

Scribbr’s Citation Checker is a unique AI-powered tool that automatically detects stylistic errors and inconsistencies in your in-text citations. It also suggests a correction for every mistake.

Currently available for APA Style, this is the fastest and easiest way to make sure you’ve formatted your citations correctly. You can try out the tool for free below.

If you need extra help with your reference list, we also offer a more in-depth Citation Editing Service.

Our experts cross-check your in-text citations and reference entries, make sure you’ve included the correct information for each source, and improve the formatting of your reference page.

If you want to handle your citations yourself, Scribbr’s free Knowledge Base provides clear, accurate guidance on every aspect of citation. You can see citation examples for a variety of common source types below:

And you can check out our comprehensive guides to the most popular citation styles:

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The abbreviation “ et al. ” (Latin for “and others”) is used to shorten citations of sources with multiple authors.

“Et al.” is used in APA in-text citations of sources with 3+ authors, e.g. (Smith et al., 2019). It is not used in APA reference entries .

Use “et al.” for 3+ authors in MLA in-text citations and Works Cited entries.

Use “et al.” for 4+ authors in a Chicago in-text citation , and for 10+ authors in a Chicago bibliography entry.

The Scribbr Citation Generator is developed using the open-source Citation Style Language (CSL) project and Frank Bennett’s citeproc-js . It’s the same technology used by dozens of other popular citation tools, including Mendeley and Zotero.

You can find all the citation styles and locales used in the Scribbr Citation Generator in our publicly accessible repository on Github .

APA format is widely used by professionals, researchers, and students in the social and behavioral sciences, including fields like education, psychology, and business.

Be sure to check the guidelines of your university or the journal you want to be published in to double-check which style you should be using.

MLA Style  is the second most used citation style (after APA ). It is mainly used by students and researchers in humanities fields such as literature, languages, and philosophy.

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• Citation examples for common sources types
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• How to Cite a Book | APA, MLA, & Chicago Examples
• How to Cite a Journal Article | APA, MLA, & Chicago Examples
• How to Cite a Lecture | APA, MLA & Chicago Examples
• How to Cite a Newspaper Article | MLA, APA & Chicago
• How to Cite a Website | MLA, APA & Chicago Examples
• How to Cite a Wikipedia Article | APA, MLA & Chicago
• How to Cite a YouTube Video | MLA, APA & Chicago
• How to Cite an Image | Photographs, Figures, Diagrams
• How to Cite an Interview | APA, MLA & Chicago Style
• Parenthetical Citation | APA, MLA & Chicago Examples
• What Are Endnotes? | Guide with Examples
• What Are Footnotes? | Guide with Word Instructions
• What Does Ibid. Mean? | Definition & Examples
• What is a DOI? | Finding and Using Digital Object Identifiers
• What Is an Annotated Bibliography? | Examples & Format

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