The input format
One source per line, fields divided by a vertical bar, in this order: author | title | container | year | URL | accessed | type. Empty fields stay empty and trailing fields can be dropped entirely. The type is one of web, book, journal or news; leave it off and the default from the dropdown applies.
The container field is the one that changes meaning by source type — publisher for a book, journal name for an article, site or organisation for a web page, publication for a news story. There is no separate field for volume, issue and page numbers, so write them into the container as Journal of Housing Studies 41(2), 118-140 and they appear in the output verbatim.
What each style is for
APA 7 puts author and date first, because in the social sciences the age of a finding is part of its weight; the in-text form carries the year for the same reason. MLA 9 serves the humanities, where you are more often pointing at a specific passage, so the in-text form carries a page number and no date. Chicago exists in two forms and this tool produces the notes-and-bibliography one, used across history and the arts, where the citation lives in a numbered footnote and the bibliography backs it up. IEEE numbers sources in the order the text first cites them and refers to them by bracketed number, which is why sorting alphabetically is the wrong move if you are using it — the numbers have to match the sequence in your prose.
Whichever you choose, the thing that actually matters to a reader is that you used one of them consistently from first page to last.
Editions move, and departments amend
Every entry produced here follows the common shape of its style, and every one of those shapes has changed at least once. APA revised its author rules between the sixth and seventh editions. MLA rebuilt its model around the idea of containers in the eighth and carried it into the ninth. Chicago's manual runs past a thousand pages and updates roughly every decade. On top of the manual, journals and university departments publish their own house amendments — a different comma, a different position for the page range — and those amendments override the manual for anything you submit to them.
So the order of operations is: find the submission guidelines for the specific place this is going, follow their examples if they give any, and use this to get the bulk of the list into shape in between. What this cannot do is tell you which of the several defensible versions your reader expects.
What is deliberately left out
Translators, editors, editions, volumes in a series, italics, DOI formatting rules, and the abbreviation conventions for three or more authors are all outside what a pipe-delimited line can express cleanly. Author names are printed exactly as typed, which means the inversion rule — surname first, initials after — is yours to apply. Same for anything that needs italics: plain text cannot carry it, so that formatting goes on in the word processor along with the hanging indent. Forty sources per run.
Questions people ask
How do I enter three or more authors?
Put them all in the author field separated by commas and they appear in the reference list as written. The in-text example only ever shows the first, because the shortening rules differ by style and edition — APA switches to "et al." from the third author onward, MLA uses it from the second, Chicago varies by whether it is a note or the bibliography. Check the rule for your style and apply it to the in-text form yourself.
Where do volume, issue and page numbers go?
Into the container field, written the way your style wants them: "Journal of Housing Studies 41(2), 118-140" for APA, or the equivalent shape for the others. They are passed through unchanged, so the punctuation you type is the punctuation you get. Italics for the journal name have to be applied in the word processor afterwards.
Can I hand this list in as it stands?
Use it as a draft and check it against the guidelines you are actually submitting to. Styles differ between editions, and schools and journals publish their own amendments that take precedence over the manual. There are also fields this tool never asks for — editors, translators, editions — that your sources may need. Where the destination publishes example references, those examples are the specification.
Why did my IEEE numbering change when I sorted?
Because IEEE numbers by order of first citation in the text, not by author. Sorting alphabetically reassigns every number, which breaks the correspondence with the bracketed references in your prose. Set the order to "as entered" and enter your sources in the sequence you cite them.
What does it do with a source that has no date?
It writes n.d. where the style has that convention, and lists the missing year in the gaps table so you can decide whether to keep hunting. Undated web pages are common and n.d. is the accepted answer for them, but for anything with a findable date — most reports, most articles — it is worth checking the page footer or the document properties before settling for it.