Inline citation insertion
While writing in the editor, type @ to open the citation search. Start typing a source title or author name — Folio searches your library in real time. Select the source you want and press Tab 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, or[1, 2]for numeric styles like IEEE and 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).
Citation formats
Folio supports five citation styles:
- APA 7th Edition — psychology, education, social sciences
- MLA 9th Edition — humanities, literature, arts
- Chicago 17th Edition — author-date and notes-bibliography variants
- IEEE — engineering, computer science
- Harvard — widely used in the UK and Australia
To switch the format for the entire document, open the document settings and select a new style. 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.
Exporting citations
When you export to DOCX, the bibliography is included and formatted in your chosen style. You can also export the bibliography on its own in plain text, BibTeX, or RIS format — useful for importing into other reference managers or submitting a standalone reference list.
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? Edit the source metadata in your library. Changes propagate to every citation that references 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.