Inline citation insertion
While writing in the editor, type [[ to open the citation search. Start typing a source title or author name and Folio searches your library in real time. Select the source you want and press Tab or Enter to insert a formatted inline citation.
The citation appears in the format you've chosen for the document, for example (Author, Year) in APA. The full reference is added to your bibliography automatically.
Grouping and narrative citations
- Citing several sources together: place two or more citations side by side and Folio merges them into one, in your chosen style:
(Smith, 2024; Jones, 2025)for author-date styles,[1], [2]in IEEE and[1,2]in Vancouver. Switch styles and the grouping reformats with everything else. - Narrative (author-in-text) citations: when you want the author's name to read as part of your sentence, use Cite narratively to get
Smith (2024)instead of(Smith, 2024). In Chicago notes-bibliography, a narrative citation keeps the author's name in your sentence and puts the note in the footnote.
Citation formats
Folio supports seven citation styles:
- APA 7th Edition: psychology, education, social sciences
- MLA 9th Edition: humanities, literature, arts
- Chicago 18th Edition: author-date (Chicago 18) and notes-bibliography (Chicago 18 (notes))
- IEEE: engineering, computer science
- Harvard: widely used in the UK and Australia
- Vancouver: medicine and the health sciences
Every new document starts in your default style, which you set in Account settings → Writing. To switch the format for one document, use the citation style menu in the editor's formatting bar, or the Style menu in the Bibliography panel. Every citation and the bibliography reformat instantly.
The bibliography
The bibliography is auto-generated from all citations you've inserted in your document. It updates in real time: add a citation and the reference appears; remove the last citation to a source and the reference disappears.
You can view the bibliography at the bottom of your document in the editor, or see it included at the end when you export. The Bibliography panel also lets you copy any single reference.
Exporting citations
When you export to Word, PDF or LaTeX, the bibliography is included and formatted in your chosen style. In a Word file, Chicago notes are real Word footnotes. You can also export the reference list on its own from the Export menu as BibTeX, RIS or CSL-JSON, useful for importing into other reference managers.
Common questions
Can I cite the same source multiple times? Yes. Each inline citation points to the same source. It appears only once in the bibliography regardless of how many times you cite it.
What if the citation format is wrong? Fix the source's details. In the editor's Sources panel, Edit lets you correct a source's title, authors and year, and the change reaches every citation of that source, across all documents.
Can I mix citation styles in one document? No. Each document uses a single citation style. This is intentional: mixed styles are a formatting error in academic writing.