How to Cite a Wikipedia Article in MLA, APA, and 5 More Styles

By MLA Generator Editorial Team · Updated July 7, 2026

A Wikipedia article breaks the standard citation template in three places at once. It has no author, and no, “Wikipedia contributors” is not the fix. It has no publication date, only a “last edited” date that changes constantly. And the text you cite today may read differently by the time anyone checks your reference, which is why APA’s official format requires a permanent link to the exact revision you read — the detail most guides skip. This page gives both official templates, one real article rendered in all seven styles the site supports, and an answer to the question behind half these searches: whether you should be citing Wikipedia at all.

The shortest answer: in MLA, the article title in quotation marks takes the author slot, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia is the italicized container, Wikimedia Foundation is the publisher, the date is the “last edited” date at the bottom of the page, and the URL drops its https://. Like this: “Oil Painting.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Dec. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oil_painting&oldid=929802398. In-text, cite the title alone: (“Oil Painting”).

What counts as a Wikipedia article

For citation purposes, a Wikipedia article is any single entry on wikipedia.org, in any language edition. The format is the same for a two-line stub and a hundred-thousand-word featured article, and APA says explicitly to use its wiki format for any wiki page, so Wiktionary and Wikiquote entries follow the same pattern with a different container name.

Before you cite the article, though, check whether the article is really your source:

• A fact backed by a footnote should usually be traced to that footnote. Follow the little superscript number to the reference list and cite the underlying journal article, book, or website instead. That source is stronger, more stable, and acceptable to instructors who ban Wikipedia.
• An image or diagram on a Wikipedia page almost always lives on Wikimedia Commons with its own creator and license. Cite it as an image, crediting that creator, not the article.
• A direct quotation Wikipedia attributes to someone (“As Darwin wrote…”) should be cited from the original work whenever you can reach it.

Cite the Wikipedia article itself when the article is genuinely what you used: its framing of a topic, its summary of a debate, or Wikipedia as a subject in its own right (say, a paper about how Wikipedia covers a controversy).

One more thing to settle before formatting anything. Both style bodies treat Wikipedia as citable but suspect: APA notes that Wikipedia “reports information from other sources, making it a secondary source,” and tells students to ask their professor whether it is appropriate. If your instructor has banned it, no citation format will save you — go through the footnotes instead, as covered in research and works cited.

Information to collect before you cite

Open the article and gather these fields:

• Article title — exactly as the page heading shows it. MLA will put it in title case; APA will flatten it to sentence case.
• Last-edited date — the line at the very bottom of every article: “This page was last edited on 8 December 2019…“. This is the date MLA uses.
• Permanent link — click View history and then the date of the revision you used, or click Permanent link in the Tools menu. The URL contains oldid= plus a revision number and always shows that exact version. APA requires this link; MLA prefers it.
• Publisher — Wikimedia Foundation, the same for every article. MLA uses it; APA does not.
• Container name — Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia in the official MLA examples, plain Wikipedia in APA’s.
• Access date — the day you read it. Optional in MLA, but recommended for a source this changeable.

There is no author field to collect. Articles are written by anonymous, ever-changing groups of editors, so both styles begin the entry with the title.

The generator at / extracts the title, dates, and publisher from a pasted Wikipedia URL automatically. Paste the permanent link rather than the browser URL and the citation locks to the revision you actually read.

One article, formatted in all seven styles

The source: the English Wikipedia article “Oil painting,” in its revision of December 8, 2019 — the exact revision APA’s official Wikipedia example cites. Permanent link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oil_painting&oldid=929802398. Accessed July 4, 2026.

Two structural decisions split the styles. The first is who fills the empty author slot. MLA and APA officially fill it with nothing: the entry begins with the article title, which then serves as the in-text citation too. Chicago treats Wikipedia like other well-known reference works: it is cited in a note that begins with the article title — “Oil Painting,” Wikipedia, last modified December 8, 2019 — and is normally omitted from the bibliography; when a bibliography entry is included, the site name Wikipedia leads. Harvard (Cite Them Right) leads with the article title in single quotation marks (the site name Wikipedia is the italicized element), and Vancouver leads with the site name itself, tucking the article title in after the date.

The second is which date and which URL discipline applies. Every style above uses the permanent oldid link, but they disagree about what surrounds it. MLA cites the last-edited date, strips https:// from the URL, and ends with a period. APA cites the date of the specific revision, keeps the full URL, and ends with no period at all — and flattens the title to sentence case (“Oil painting”) while MLA keeps title case (“Oil Painting”).

The in-text citation for the same article:

• MLA: (“Oil Painting”) — the title stands in for the author; shorten a long title to its first noun phrase.
• APA: (“Oil Painting,” 2019) in parentheses, or “Oil Painting” (2019) narratively. Note the flip to title case in-text.
• Chicago: normally a footnote rather than an in-text reference — “Oil Painting,” Wikipedia, last modified December 8, 2019, URL — with the entry usually left out of the bibliography entirely; in author–date, the short title stands in for the missing author.
• Harvard: (‘Oil painting’, 2019) — the title in single quotation marks in place of an author (the site name Wikipedia, not the article title, is what gets italicized).
• Vancouver, AMA: a superscript number keyed to the reference list.
• IEEE: [5], or whatever the entry’s number is.

How to cite a Wikipedia article in MLA

The MLA 9 works-cited template:

“Article Title.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Day Month Year last edited, URL.

The MLA Style Center’s own example:

“Encyclopedia.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Dec. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia.

Each slot, in order: the article title in quotation marks and title case; the container Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, italicized; Wikimedia Foundation as publisher; the date from the “This page was last edited on…” line at the bottom of the article, in MLA’s day-month-year form with the month abbreviated; and the URL without https://, ending in a period. MLA’s rule for the missing author comes straight from its reference-work guidance: “If the entry is signed, begin with the author’s name. If it is unsigned, begin by listing the entry as the title.” Wikipedia articles are always unsigned.

In-text, cite the title in quotation marks, since that is what begins the works-cited entry: (“Encyclopedia”), or in our running example, (“Oil Painting”). Shorten a long title to its opening noun phrase, and see the in-text citations guide for how shortened titles work generally. There are no page numbers, so the title appears alone.

Three variants matter in practice:

Use the permanent link. MLA 9 says to prefer a URL the source identifies as stable, permanent, or persistent, and Wikipedia provides exactly that: the Permanent link item in the article’s Tools menu, or any revision opened from View history. The resulting oldid URL freezes the text you cited, which is why the table above uses it rather than the ordinary /wiki/Oil_painting address. The plain address, as in MLA’s own example, is still correct; the permalink is simply better.

Add an access date if the page might move under you. MLA makes “Accessed 4 July 2026.” an optional final element and recommends it for frequently revised sources. If you cite the ordinary URL rather than a permalink, include it.

The short container form. You will see many citations with plain Wikipedia as the container. The MLA Style Center’s own examples use the site’s full self-description, Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, with Wikimedia Foundation as publisher, and that is the form to follow; the short form is common and understood, but it is not what the official examples show.

How to cite a Wikipedia article in APA

APA 7 gained a dedicated Wikipedia format (Publication Manual section 10.3). The reference template:

Title of entry. (Year, Month Day). In Wikipedia. URL of the archived version

APA Style’s official example, verbatim:

Oil painting. (2019, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oil_painting&oldid=929802398

Four details are load-bearing. First, there is no author; the entry starts with the title, in sentence case and without quotation marks or italics. Second, the date is the date of the specific revision you cited, not today and not whenever the article was created. Third, the URL must be the archived revision. APA’s instruction: “cite an archived version of a Wikipedia page so that readers can retrieve the version you used,” reached by “selecting ‘View history’ and then the time and date of the version you used.” That is the oldid link. Fourth, no period after the URL.

In-text, the title flips to title case and goes in quotation marks: the parenthetical citation is (“Oil Painting,” 2019) and the narrative form is “Oil Painting” (2019). If an entry somehow has no date, use n.d. in place of the year.

Two APA-specific notes. If you cite a wiki that does not offer permanent revision links, APA says to include the entry’s URL plus a retrieval date instead (“Retrieved July 4, 2026, from…”); Wikipedia itself always has permalinks, so a Wikipedia reference should never need one. And APA is the style most explicit about legitimacy: ask your professor first, and remember the manual’s framing of Wikipedia as a secondary source. Compare how MLA and APA differ on this and everything else if you get to choose your style.

Edge cases

Your instructor bans Wikipedia. Cite what Wikipedia cites. Scroll to the References section, follow the footnote behind the fact you need, read that source, and cite it directly. This is not a workaround; it is better research practice, and it is what Wikipedia’s own guidance for students recommends. The research and works cited guide covers evaluating what you find there.

Wikipedia’s built-in “Cite this page” tool. Every article’s Tools menu includes a citation generator (Special:Cite) that outputs entries beginning “Wikipedia contributors.” That contradicts both official formats: MLA and APA each begin the entry with the article title and name no author. Use that page to grab the permanent link it lists, not the formatting.

The article changed since you read it. This is exactly what the permanent link prevents. If you cited the ordinary URL and the text has since changed, go to View history, find the revision closest to your access date, and swap in its oldid URL. Your date element should match that revision (APA) or the last-edited date it shows (MLA).

The article was deleted. Deletion removes the revision history too, so even oldid links die. Check the Wayback Machine for a snapshot of the page; if one exists, cite the archive URL and note the situation in your prose. No archive means no verifiable source, and you should find another.

No date anywhere. Live articles always show a last-edited line, but mirrors and offline copies may not. APA substitutes (n.d.) for the year; MLA simply omits the date element and leans on the access date instead.

A different language edition or another wiki. Same format throughout. APA’s guidance is explicit that the wiki format covers “any wiki page,” so a Wiktionary definition or a German Wikipedia article changes only the container name and URL. For AI chatbots that summarize Wikipedia at you, cite the chatbot only if you must; the encyclopedia is the better source of the two.

The principle behind every rule on this page: you are citing a version, not a page. Wikipedia is a moving target, so the citation’s job is to freeze it — the permanent link to the revision you read, the date of that revision, and the title standing in for the author it never had. Get those three right and the rest of the format, in any style, falls into place.

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