Writing
Citation consistency checker
“Do my in-text citations and References actually match?” Paste both, get a two-way report: citations with no list entry, entries never cited, year mismatches, and surnames that look misspelled. Runs entirely in your browser — the text never leaves this page.
Report
—
Paste both boxes to cross-check citations.
In-text citations
—
Listed references
—
Issues found
—
How to use this page
Two-way check. Direction one: every in-text citation — (Smith, 2020), Smith et al. (2020), or [3] — must resolve to an entry in the reference list. Direction two: every listed entry should be cited at least once; uncited entries usually belong in a bibliography, not a reference list.
What else gets flagged. Same author cited with a different year than the list shows (often an online-first vs print-year issue), two entries for the same author and year (check whether the text needs 2020a/2020b suffixes), and surnames that nearly match an entry — the classic “Koce” vs “Koch” typo.
Formats understood. Author-year styles (APA, Harvard, MLA author-page without page, Chicago author-date, Chinese GB/T 7714 author-year) and numbered styles (IEEE, Vancouver, GB/T 7714 numeric, including ranges like [2-5] and groups [1,3,8]). Mixed styles are reported under whichever dominates.
Limits. This checks presence and consistency, not formatting correctness — “is the comma in the right place” is a style-guide question. It also cannot tell whether a citation actually supports the sentence it sits next to.
Questions people ask
Which citation styles are supported?
Both families: author-year (APA, Harvard, MLA author-page, Chicago author-date, GB/T 7714) and numbered styles (IEEE, Vancouver, GB/T 7714 numeric, including ranges like [2-5] and groups like [1,3,8]). The dominant style in your paste is used automatically.
Does it mistake “Table 1” or “Figure 2” for citations?
No. Only bracketed digits or parenthetical text containing a four-digit year count as citations; table/figure numbers, equation labels and statistics like n=200 are skipped.
What does a “year mismatch” mean?
The text cites (Smith, 2020) but the list only has Smith 2019. Often it is an online-first vs print-year difference — normalise to the target style; sometimes the in-text year is simply wrong.
Is my paper uploaded anywhere?
No. All checking runs locally in your browser — the text never leaves the page and disappears when you close it.