# Citation Checker: APA and Harvard references · HidenGPT

> Paste your essay and reference list to find citations with no reference, references you never cited and years that don't match. For APA 7 and Harvard.

Source: https://hidengpt.com/tools/citation-checker

# Citation checker

Paste your text and your reference list. The checker finds author-date citations such as (Smith, 2020), Smith (2020), (Smith & Lee, 2020) and (Smith et al., 2020), matches each one to the list by first author and year, and lists citations with no reference, references never cited and years that don't match. It runs in your browser and sends nothing.

Your text

Reference list

Runs in your browser. Nothing you paste is sent or saved.

Writing the essay from your sources?

HidenGPT's essay format cites only the sources you list, in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago author-date or Harvard, and leaves a [source] placeholder where nothing matches.

[See how it cites](https://hidengpt.com/write/essay-with-real-citations)

## What it reads

In the text: parenthetical citations, (Smith, 2020) or Harvard's (Smith 2020), with or without page numbers; narrative ones such as Smith (2020) and Smith and Lee's (2020); et al.; several sources in one bracket separated by semicolons; several years for one author; year suffixes like 2020a; n.d. and in press; and lead-ins like see and e.g. In an “as cited in” citation only the source you read is checked, because that is the one that goes in the reference list. A group author introduced with an abbreviation, World Health Organization [WHO], is matched when you later write (WHO, 2021).

In the list: one entry per line, authors first and the year after them, as APA and Harvard both do. Entries that wrapped onto a second line when pasted are joined back up.

## How it matches

Each citation is matched on the first author's surname and the year. Accents and capitals are ignored, so Celik matches Çelik, and van der Berg matches Berg. If the surname is in the list with another year, that's a year mismatch; if it isn't there at all, the citation has no reference. A reference no citation matches by author and year is listed as never cited. When two entries share a first author and year, add a and b to the years, as APA asks, and the checker keeps them apart.

## Limits

Author-date styles only: APA 7, Harvard and similar. It doesn't read numbered styles such as IEEE or Vancouver, MLA's author-page citations, (Smith 45), or footnotes. It checks that citations and references match each other, not that the formatting is right, that the sources exist or that they say what you cite them for, and it isn't a plagiarism check. Unusual names or layouts can be misread, so look at each item it lists before you change anything.

## What it reads

Each citation on the left, read by the checker itself.

| Written as | Read as |
|---|---|
| (Smith, 2020) | Smith, 2020 |
| (Smith 2020: 45) | Smith, 2020 |
| Smith and Lee (2020) | Smith & Lee, 2020 |
| (Smith & Lee, 2020, p. 14) | Smith & Lee, 2020 |
| (Smith et al., 2019a) | Smith et al., 2019a |
| (Smith, 2020; Lee, 2018) | Smith, 2020; Lee, 2018 |
| (Smith, 2019, 2020) | Smith, 2019; Smith, 2020 |
| (see Chen, n.d.) | Chen, n.d. |
| (Freud, 1923, as cited in Lee, 2019) | Lee, 2019 |
| (World Health Organization [WHO], 2019) | World Health Organization, 2019 |

## Questions

### Does it check APA formatting?

No. It matches citations to references. Italics, capitals, DOIs and the order of the list need a separate read against the APA 7 rules.

### Can it check MLA?

Not MLA's in-text citations, which give a page number instead of a year. An MLA works cited list may still match on first author and year, but don't rely on it.

### Why is a reference listed as never cited when I cited it?

Usually the year or the spelling of the surname differs between the text and the list, or the citation is in a form it doesn't read. Look at the year mismatches first.

### Is my essay sent anywhere?

No. The matching runs in your browser, and nothing you paste is sent to our servers or saved.

### Is it free?

Yes, with no account and no limit.

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