How to Cite a Magazine Article in APA, MLA, and Chicago

Learning how to cite a magazine article is a common task once you start writing essays, research papers, or blog posts that draw on popular sources. Magazines like Time, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Wired sit somewhere between newspapers and scholarly journals, and that in-between status trips up a lot of writers. This guide walks through the correct format for both print and online magazine articles in APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, and Chicago 17th edition, and it explains how a magazine citation differs from a journal article citation so you never mix the two up.

What counts as a magazine article

A magazine is a periodical aimed at a general or specialty audience, published weekly, monthly, or quarterly, and identified by its issue date rather than a volume system alone. That is the key distinction from a scholarly journal article, which is peer reviewed, organized by volume and issue numbers, and usually carries a DOI. If your source has a cover date like “June 2026” and glossy feature writing, treat it as a magazine. If it has an abstract, references, and a DOI, treat it as a journal. When the difference is hard to call, our overview of citation styles can help you decide.

The core pieces you need for any magazine citation are the author, the publication date, the article title, the magazine name, and the location details (page numbers for print, a URL for online). The order and formatting of those pieces is what changes between styles.

How to cite a magazine article in APA

In APA 7th edition, magazine references use the author, the full publication date in parentheses, the article title in sentence case, the magazine name in italics, the volume and issue, and the page range. Sentence case means you capitalize only the first word of the title and subtitle plus any proper nouns. The magazine title, by contrast, is italicized and uses title case. If you want to double-check the structure, our APA format guide and the APA citation generator build the entry for you.

For an online magazine article, drop the page numbers if there are none and add the URL at the end. Include the volume and issue only if the site provides them, which many do not.

Note the difference from a journal: a journal article in APA would italicize the volume number but typically omit the month, using only the year. Magazines keep the month (and the day for weeklies). For more on in-text mechanics, see our guide to APA in-text citations and the full APA reference page layout.

How to cite a magazine article in MLA

MLA 9th edition uses title case for the article title, places it in quotation marks, italicizes the magazine name as the container, and lists the publication date and page numbers. Remember the MLA quirk: lowercase all prepositions in titles regardless of length, so you would write “along the Coast” rather than “Along the Coast.” The author appears as Last, First on the works-cited page. Our MLA format guide and the MLA citation generator handle the punctuation automatically.

For an online magazine article in MLA, add the website name if it differs from the print title, the date, and the URL with the https:// removed. Use the access date only if the source is likely to change or has no publication date.

Notice the MLA in-text citation uses (Last page) with no comma and no year, and it omits the page number entirely for an unpaginated web source. For the full method, see MLA in-text citations and how to format your MLA works cited page.

How to cite a magazine article in Chicago

Chicago style offers two systems. The notes-bibliography system (common in the humanities) uses footnotes and a bibliography entry. The author-date system (common in the sciences) uses parenthetical citations. Magazine articles in Chicago typically cite the specific page in the note and a page range in the bibliography, and they often omit volume and issue in favor of the date. The Chicago style guide and the Chicago citation generator cover both variants.

The shortened note used after the first reference would read: 2. Reyes, “Slow Return of the Night Train,” 49. For an online article, add the URL at the end of the entry. In the author-date variant, the reference list entry and parenthetical look like this:

Magazine vs. journal: the key differences

This is the distinction students get wrong most often. A magazine is written for a broad audience and identified by its cover date; a journal is scholarly, peer reviewed, and identified by volume and issue with a DOI. In APA, a journal citation usually shows only the year, italicizes the volume number, and ends with a DOI, while a magazine citation includes the month and the issue in parentheses. In MLA, journals add “vol.” and “no.” labels before the numbers, whereas magazines lead with the date. When in doubt, check whether the source lists references at the end (journal) or reads like feature journalism (magazine). Our guides to newspaper articles and websites cover the neighboring source types.

Common mistakes to avoid

Watch out for these frequent errors when citing magazines:

Treating a magazine like a journal

Adding “vol.” and “no.” labels in MLA or dropping the month in APA turns a magazine into a journal by accident. Keep the date prominent for magazines.

Using title case in APA article titles

APA article titles are sentence case. Only the magazine name gets title case and italics. Reversing this is one of the most common APA slips.

Forgetting the issue date for weeklies

A weekly magazine needs the full date (Year, Month Day in APA; Day Mon. Year in MLA). Listing only the year is incorrect for magazines.

Leaving https:// in MLA URLs

MLA 9th edition omits the protocol, so write www.example.com/article, not the full https:// address. If you cite many sources, the Harvard citation generator and our how to cite sources guide can keep your formatting consistent.

Citing a magazine article comes down to keeping the date front and center, matching the capitalization rules of your style, and remembering that a magazine is not a journal. Once you have the author, date, article title, magazine name, and location, any of the three major styles falls into place. Build your reference with the APA citation generator or compare formats across styles, and your bibliography will be accurate and ready to submit.