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How to cite a book
Paste an ISBN and the details come back from OpenLibrary. What follows is how to check them against the book in your hands.
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The same source in all seven styles
One book, Roald Dahl's Matilda, in all seven styles. These are not typed out by hand: they come from the same formatter that writes your reference above, so what you read here is what you will get.
APA 7
Dahl, R. (1988). Matilda. Jonathan Cape.
MLA 9
Dahl, Roald. Matilda. Jonathan Cape, 1988.
Harvard
Dahl, R. (1988) Matilda. Jonathan Cape.
Chicago 18
Dahl, Roald. Matilda. Jonathan Cape, 1988.
IEEE
R. Dahl, Matilda. Jonathan Cape, 1988.
Vancouver
Dahl R. Matilda. London: Jonathan Cape; 1988.
AMA 11
Dahl R. Matilda. Jonathan Cape; 1988.
Plain text cannot carry italics. Where a style italicises a title, apply it in your document after pasting.
What you need, and where to find it
Authors
The title page, not the cover. A cover sometimes drops a second author that the title page keeps.
Year
The copyright page. Not the cover, and not the year of the printing you are holding.
Title and subtitle
Both, joined by a colon. Subtitles get dropped constantly and they are part of the title.
Publisher
The copyright page. APA 7 and Chicago 18 both dropped the publisher's city; Vancouver still wants it.
Edition
Only when it is not the first. A second edition is a different book and often has different page numbers.
Where people go wrong
The cover lies and the copyright page does not
A 2019 printing of a book first published in 1988 is still a 1988 book. The copyright page will say so. Cite the year the text was published, and only use the later date if the text itself was revised.
A book title never goes in quotation marks
Quotation marks are for something inside a container: a chapter, an article, a page on a site. A whole book is italicised instead. Getting this backwards is the single most visible citation error there is, which is why the generator now refuses to add them.
A chapter in an edited book is a different reference
You cite the chapter and its author, then the word In, then the editors and the book they edited. CiteRight's lookup handles whole books. For a chapter, add the editors and the chapter pages yourself.
Chicago and MLA can come out identical
Since Chicago's 18th edition dropped the place of publication, a simple book reads the same in Chicago and in MLA 9: author, title, publisher, year. The two examples on this page match because the rules now match, not because anything went wrong.
Questions
Where do I find the ISBN?
The back cover above the barcode, or the copyright page. It is a lookup key rather than part of the reference: none of the seven styles print an ISBN in a bibliography.
Ebook or paperback?
APA 7 stopped distinguishing. The same book gets the same reference whichever format you read. Add a URL only when the work exists nowhere but online.
Do I need the publisher's city?
Not in APA 7 or Chicago 18, which both dropped it. Vancouver still expects it, and older Harvard guides at some universities ask for it too, so check the guide you were given.
Citing something else?
Or read the rules for one style
THE ANDROID APP
Keep them, export them, and check your draft
CiteRight for Android keeps references in projects, exports a bibliography in any of the six styles, and checks a draft sentence by sentence for text that overlaps a source.