This guide to ABNT NBR 6023 and NBR 10520 is published by EdCitation, whose tools look a reference up in the publisher's record and never write one. It covers how Brazilian universities want references and citations laid out, what changed in 2023 and 2025, and how ABNT differs from APA 7. Both standards are sold by ABNT, and we could not read either; ABNT's own catalogue page would not open for us. Every rule below comes from university library guides that quote the standards, read on 26 September 2026. The English translations of Portuguese quotations are ours.
EdCitation's Cite a source does not build ABNT references; it builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver only. It does show the record an ABNT reference is made from, and Verify references checks a Portuguese-language list, free and with no account.
What are ABNT NBR 6023 and NBR 10520?
NBR 6023 sets out how to write a reference, and NBR 10520 how to cite a source in the text. Both come from ABNT, the Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas, Brazil's standards body.
Which edition of NBR 6023 is current?
The third edition, published on 21 May 2025. The Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (2025) announced it in July 2025, saying "parte do seu conteúdo" (part of its content, our translation) had been revised. Target, the platform through which Uberlândia gives students the standards, lists it as May 2025, 68 pages, after versions dated 1989, 2000, 2002, 2018 and 2020 (Target Normas, n.d.). The Instituto de Economia library at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (2025) has already rebuilt its guide on the 2025 text.
Many guides have not caught up. The Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (n.d.) still lists NBR 6023:2018 among its standards, and a 2025 manual from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2025) cites the 2018 edition throughout. Since the standard is sold, we cannot list the 2025 changes clause by clause. Guides written on the 2025 text keep the familiar book, article and chapter patterns; the Universidade Federal de Jataí (n.d.) asks for an event's city only "se houver" (if there is one, our translation).
What changed in NBR 10520:2023?
NBR 10520 was reissued on 19 July 2023, growing from 7 pages to 23, as the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2023) explains. The change students notice: the author in a citation, once in capitals, (SILVA, 2020), now takes "apenas a inicial maiúscula" (only the initial capital, our translation), so (Silva, 2020). The same update gave the apud citation a clause of its own, 7.3.
How do I write an ABNT reference?
Put the essential elements in a fixed order: author, title, edition, place, publisher and date, then the details of the part and any online access.
Authors
The surname comes first in capitals, then the forenames, written out or as initials, consistently. Semicolons separate authors. The Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (2023), PUC-SP, says to name all authors up to three; with four or more, name them all or give the first followed by et al., and "NÃO USAR vírgula antes de et al." (do not put a comma before et al., our translation). Funaro et al. (2024), the guide of the University of São Paulo (USP), asks only that the choice be consistent. A particle such as de follows the forenames, as in USP's own entry for one of its guide's authors: AGUIAR, Giseli Adornato de. For how APA, MLA and others shorten author lists, see when to use et al.
Title and emphasis
The main title is emphasised and the subtitle is not: Repensando o Brasil do oitocentos: cidadania, política e liberdade. Bold is the common choice, but PUC-SP allows "negrito, itálico ou sublinhado" (bold, italics or underlining, our translation), provided one is used for the whole list. In a book or article title only the first word and proper names take a capital. For an article, the journal's name is the part emphasised, never the article's title.
Journal articles, chapters and online sources
- Articles give the journal, its city, then v. for volume, n. for issue and p. for pages, and the date with the month abbreviated in the source's language (ago., set., dez.).
- Chapters name the chapter's author and title, then In: and the book's editor and details. The 2025 guide from Campinas sets In, et al. and [S.l.] in italics.
- Online sources end with Disponível em: and the address, then Acesso em: and the day you read it. A DOI, which the Campinas guide calls optional, goes before them as a full link.
Two worked examples
A journal article, as USP sets it (Funaro et al., 2024):
GOMES, R. B. et al. Novos diálogos dos estudos feministas da deficiência. Revista Estudos Feministas, Florianópolis, v. 27, n. 1, e48155, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9584-2019v27n148155. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/ref/a/c7sJxYbSppg9kQMNvwvN6fh/. Acesso em: 17 ago. 2022.
A chapter in an edited book, as the Universidade Federal de Jataí (n.d.) sets it:
NEVES, Lucia Maria Bastos Pereira das. Constituição: usos antigos e novos de um conceito no Império do Brasil (1821-1860). In: CARVALHO, José Murilo de; NEVES, Lúcia Maria Bastos Pereira das (org.). Repensando o Brasil do oitocentos: cidadania, política e liberdade. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2009. p. 181-205.
We checked the article against its Crossref record, which names four authors. The chapter's details are Jataí's; other papers cite it the same way, but we did not see the book.
How do citations work under NBR 10520:2023?
Choose author-date or numeric and keep to it; Funaro et al. (2024) add that a citation's name must match its entry in the list.
Author-date
Give the surname and year, and the page for a direct quotation: (Pereira, 2013), or Madigan et al. (2010, p. 89) before a quotation, both examples from the USP guide. Inside brackets, authors are separated by semicolons, (Ramos; Pestana, 2014); in the sentence, by "e", as in Ramos e Pestana (2014). With four or more, the guides allow the first author and et al. The Campinas guide shows how new the change is: its own citation example, (ZIGGELAR, 1980a), still uses the old capitals.
Numeric
Number sources in order of first citation, in brackets or superscript, never restarting on a new page; a source cited again keeps its number. The USP guide warns "NÃO usar este sistema quando houver notas de rodapé" (do not use this system when there are footnotes, our translation).
Apud, for a source you did not read
Apud, printed in italics and meaning "citado por" (cited by), names the original author and date, then the work you read: Freire (1994, p. 13 apud Streck; Redin; Zitkoski, 2017, p. 25). The Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2025) puts "somente a fonte consultada" (only the source consulted, our translation) in the reference list. USP also puts the unread original in a footnote, keeps apud for an original that "não foi recuperado" (could not be obtained, our translation), and allows no other Latin term in the running text; ibid. and op. cit. belong in notes, as ibid., op. cit. and loc. cit. explained describes.
How does ABNT differ from APA 7?
Mostly in the order and emphasis of the same facts: ABNT puts the date near the end and emphasises the container, while APA 7 puts the date after the authors (American Psychological Association, 2025).
| Element | ABNT NBR 6023 form | APA 7 form | Example (ABNT) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | SURNAME, Forenames or initials | Surname, Initials. | GOMES, R. B. |
| Several authors | Semicolons; four or more may take et al. | Commas and &, up to 20 names | GOMES, R. B. et al. |
| Date | Near the end, after pages | In brackets after the authors | e48155, 2019. |
| Article title | Plain, first word capitalised | Plain, sentence case | Novos diálogos dos estudos feministas da deficiência. |
| Journal | Emphasised, usually bold, then city | Italic, with the volume | Revista Estudos Feministas, Florianópolis |
| Volume and issue | v. 27, n. 1 | 27(1) | v. 27, n. 1 |
| Chapter in a book | In: then the editors in capitals, (org.) | In A. Editor (Ed.), with the pages in brackets | In: CARVALHO, José Murilo de; NEVES... (org.) |
| Online access | DOI, Disponível em:, Acesso em: | DOI as a link; no access date for a DOI | Acesso em: 17 ago. 2022. |
| In-text citation | (Gomes et al., 2019), or a number | (Gomes et al., 2019) | Gomes et al. (2019) |
| Secondary source | (Freire, 1994 apud Streck; Redin; Zitkoski, 2017) | (Freire, 1994, as cited in Streck et al., 2017) | apud |
| Checking the list | EdCitation's Verify references, free | The same, and Cite a source builds APA 7 | Four entries, three verified |
For the same article, EdCitation built this APA 7 reference from the Crossref record:
Gomes, R. B., Lopes, P. H., Gesser, M., & Toneli, M. J. F. (2019). Novos diálogos dos estudos feministas da deficiência. Revista Estudos Feministas, 27(1), Article e48155. https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9584-2019v27n148155
APA's rule for a secondary source matches ABNT's in spirit: name the original, write "as cited in", and list only the work you read (American Psychological Association, 2022).
What do universities in Portugal use?
Portugal had its own standard, NP 405, in four parts for printed, non-book, unpublished and electronic documents. The engineering library at the Universidade do Porto (2026) now warns that they were "anuladas e substituídas pela NP ISO 690:2024" (annulled and replaced by NP ISO 690:2024, our translation), a translation of ISO 690:2021, though it still teaches NP 405 author-date. A course in Portugal may ask for either; the handbook decides. NBR 6023 is Brazil's alone.
Can EdCitation build or check an ABNT reference?
It cannot build one, and it checks one well. We ran each free tool on real Portuguese-language material on 26 September 2026; this is what came back.
Cite a source: the record behind the reference
Cite a source builds six styles, none of them ABNT. Run on the Gomes DOI, it returned the Crossref record with every accent intact: title, journal, volume 27, issue 1, e48155 and all four authors with full forenames. That is everything an ABNT reference needs except the city, which you add yourself. Its MLA and Chicago versions kept the Portuguese title's own capitals, as ABNT does.
A record is only as good as its deposit. On the USP guide's DOI, 10.11606/9786598386221, Cite a source listed six authors, because the Crossref record enters each author's faculty, such as "Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Odontologia", as an author. It filed Giseli Adornato de Aguiar under Aguiar, as the record does, writing "Aguiar, G. A. de" in APA. Check authors against the title page.
Verify references: a Portuguese list
Verify references is the best free tool we know for testing an ABNT list, because it looks each entry up in the publishers' records instead of writing one, and never shows a reference it could not check as "not found". Of four ABNT entries we pasted, three came back verified: the Gomes article and the USP guide ("The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches") and a 2004 Revista de Saúde Pública article with no DOI ("Title, year and first author match a published record").
The fourth was a fault. Paulo Freire's Pedagogia da autonomia (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1996), a real book, came back doubtful: "A work with this title is recorded in InterEspaço: Revista de Geografia e Interdisciplinaridade (2019), not in the source your entry names. Check your source." The match was a 2019 review titled with the book's ABNT reference. Doubtful means look again; here the book was right.
Find sources and Check your paper
Find sources searched "sobrecarga de cuidadores de idosos com demência" (burden on carers of older people with dementia) and put ten Portuguese-language studies at the top, from a 2023 review in Revista OMNIA Saúde to a 2016 systematic review in the Jornal Brasileiro de Psiquiatria. One fault: a title stored in capitals came back as "Fatores associados À sobrecarga E qualidade de vida", with À and E left capitalised.
Check your paper does not yet read Portuguese instructions. Given the Universidade Federal do Ceará's (2017) TCC regulation for its public policy course, which requires ABNT and recommends 40 to 60 pages, it returned no rules and set nothing aside. Our English translation of those two sentences gave the 40 to 60 page range, with its sentence, but not the ABNT requirement.
All four tools are free with no account. EdCitation never writes any part of a TCC, dissertation or thesis, and gives no grade.
How do I build an ABNT reference list, step by step?
- Read your course's regulation for the style, the edition and any university guide it names.
- Find sources with EdCitation's Find sources, searching in Portuguese.
- Run each DOI through Cite a source to see the record: authors, title, journal, volume, issue, pages and DOI.
- Write the ABNT entry from that record: SURNAME in capitals, the title or journal in bold, v., n., p., then the date.
- Add the city, fix any author the record got wrong, and end online sources with DOI:, Disponível em: and Acesso em:.
- Cite in the text with only the first letter capitalised, (Gomes et al., 2019), or number every citation, and never mix the two.
- Paste the finished list into Verify references and look again at anything doubtful. For how that check works, see how to check a reference is real.
Quick questions
Is the title in bold in ABNT?
Usually. Bold, italics or underlining are all allowed if one is used throughout; the guides we read use bold, and the subtitle stays plain.
Are author names in capitals in ABNT citations?
Not since NBR 10520:2023: a citation takes only an initial capital, (Silva, 2020). The reference list keeps the surname in capitals.
What does apud mean in ABNT?
Apud means "cited by". Use it for a source you could not read yourself: Freire (1994 apud Streck; Redin; Zitkoski, 2017), and list only the work you actually read.
Does EdCitation make ABNT references?
No. EdCitation's Cite a source builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver, but Verify references checks an ABNT list, free.
Is NP 405 the same as ABNT?
No. NP 405 was Portugal's standard, now replaced by NP ISO 690:2024, says the Universidade do Porto's engineering library. NBR 6023 is Brazil's.
References
- American Psychological Association. (2022). Secondary sources. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/secondary-sources
- American Psychological Association. (2025). Journal article references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/journal-article-references
- Funaro, V. M. B. de O., Aguiar, G. A. de, & Laet, M. A. (2024). Diretrizes para apresentação de dissertações e teses da USP: Parte I (ABNT) (5th ed.). Universidade de São Paulo, Agência de Bibliotecas e Coleções Digitais. https://doi.org/10.11606/9786598386221
- Gomes, R. B., Lopes, P. H., Gesser, M., & Toneli, M. J. F. (2019). Novos diálogos dos estudos feministas da deficiência. Revista Estudos Feministas, 27(1), Article e48155. https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9584-2019v27n148155
- Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. (2023). Guia para elaboração de referências de acordo com a norma da ABNT [PDF]. Sistema de Bibliotecas. https://www.pucsp.br/sites/default/files/download/biblioteca/guia-para-elaboracao-referencias-de-acordo-com-a-norma-da-abnt-atualizado30102023.pdf
- Target Normas. (n.d.). ABNT NBR 6023: Informação e documentação: Referências: Elaboração [Catalogue entry]. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://www.target.com.br/produtos/normas-tecnicas/35493/nbr6023-informacao-e-documentacao-referencias-elaboracao
- Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Engenharia. (2026, September 15). NP 405: Normas para citar e referenciar. Biblioteca da FEUP. https://feup.libguides.com/np405
- Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia. (2025). NBR 6023/2025: Informação e documentação: Referências: Elaboração [PDF]. Biblioteca IE/CEDOC. https://www3.eco.unicamp.br/biblioteca/images/arquivos/NBR60232025Referencias.pdf
- Universidade Federal de Jataí. (n.d.). Elaboração de referências: ABNT NBR 6023:2025. Sistema de Bibliotecas. https://sibi.ufj.edu.br/elaboracao-de-referencias-abnt-nbr-60232025/
- Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. (n.d.). Normas de documentação da ABNT. Biblioteca Universitária. https://portal.bu.ufsc.br/normalizacao/normas-brasileiras/
- Universidade Federal de Uberlândia. (2025, July 4). Atualização da norma de elaboração de referências: ABNT NBR 6023. Bibliotecas UFU. https://bibliotecas.ufu.br/acontece/2025/07/atualizacao-da-norma-de-elaboracao-de-referencias-abnt-nbr-6023
- Universidade Federal do Ceará. (2017). Regulamento do trabalho de conclusão de curso [PDF]. Curso de Gestão de Políticas Públicas. https://gestaopoliticaspublicas.ufc.br/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/regulamento-tcc-obs.-despacho-prograd-out-23.10.2017-1.pdf
- Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. (2023, July 24). Atualizações na ABNT NBR 10520/2023: Citações bibliográficas. Biblioteca do ICBS. https://www.ufrgs.br/bibicbs/atualizacoes-na-abnt-nbr-10520-2023-citacoes-bibliograficas/
- Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. (2025). Manual de citações e referências [PDF]. Biblioteca do Instituto de Biociências. https://www.ufrgs.br/bibbio/wp-content/uploads/2025-MANUAL-DE-CITACOES-E-REFERENCIAS.pdf