To cite sources on slides, give each borrowed fact, quotation, image or chart a short credit where it appears, and list every source in full on a final slide. APA, MLA and Chicago all expect that, and none sets a slide layout, so the short forms follow each style's rules for papers. Speaker notes hold the citation you will say aloud, but the audience never sees them, so they are never the only place a source is named.
EdCitation publishes this guide. Its tools take every reference from the publisher's record, and none of them writes a word of your deck or your notes. On 2 October 2026 we read APA Style, the MLA Style Center, Chicago's own Q&A and four library guides that fill the gaps, then built one slide in all three styles with EdCitation's free Cite a source.
For what to say aloud, see citing sources in a speech or debate; for business decks and source lines, see citing sources in a consulting deck.
What do APA, MLA and Chicago say about citing on slides?
All three say a presentation credits its sources as a paper does, and all three leave the slide's look to you.
APA 7
According to APA Style, its rules for crediting sources hold in a presentation, but type size, how much text a slide carries, colour and animation are left to the writer (American Psychological Association, 2020c). In 2010 the APA Style Blog called the manual "silent about certain topics", PowerPoint slides among them (Hume-Pratuch, 2010). George Washington University's Himmelfarb Library (2026) still advises asking your instructor.
MLA 9
The MLA Style Center says to cite an image in a PowerPoint presentation as in a printed paper, and that the works-cited list may be the final slide (Modern Language Association, 2019). McGill University Library (2026) adds brief citations on each slide, citing the eighth-edition handbook. MLA marks its slide posts as eighth-edition content, and we could not read the ninth edition's own wording, which is sold by subscription.
Chicago
Chicago's Q&A suggests a slide or two of references at the end, set out like a reference list; footnotes on the slides if the deck will not be shared afterwards; and a brief credit on the slide for a direct quotation or specific data (University of Chicago Press, n.d.). EdCitation offers the 18th edition's author-date form only, so our Chicago examples are author-date.
How do APA, MLA and Chicago compare on slides?
They agree on a short citation beside each claim and a full list at the end, and differ on images and clip art. Each row gives the style's rule, or the library guide we used where the style is silent.
| On the slide | APA 7 | MLA 9 | Chicago 18 author-date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short citation | (Hughes et al., 2017) | (Hughes et al.) | (Hughes et al. 2017) |
| Borrowed image | Figure note with copyright attribution when the licence asks (APA, 2020a) | Caption: full details, or enough to lead to the list (MLA, 2019) | Number, title and "Source:" line; list of figures before the references (Curtin, 2026) |
| PowerPoint clip art | No attribution (APA, 2020a) | An entry if you discuss it (MLA, 2017) | Not covered |
| Final list | References; single spacing allowed (GWU, 2026) | Works Cited, final slide (MLA, 2019) | References, at the end (Chicago, n.d.) |
| Speaker notes | Citations there too (Sheridan, 2026) | Not covered | Not covered |
| Someone else's slides | [PowerPoint slides] with site and URL (APA, 2020c) | Platform as container (MLA, 2020) | "PowerPoint slides" after the title (Curtin, 2026) |
| A talk you attended | Personal communication if unrecorded (APA, 2019) | Cite the talk, not your notes (MLA, 2026) | Live speech: personal communication (Curtin, 2026) |
How do I put an in-text citation on a slide?
Use the style's ordinary in-text form at the end of the line it supports, with a page number for a quotation. When the source is itself a deck, add the slide: "(slide 2)" in MLA's example (Modern Language Association, 2018), "(Richardson 2015, slide 9)" in Curtin University Library's (2026) Chicago guide.
When a source has dozens of authors
Hughes et al. (2017) has 46 authors. On the slide all three styles shorten it to the first surname and et al. In the full entry they part: APA 7 lists 19 authors, an ellipsis and the last; MLA 9 gives the first and et al.; Chicago 18 gives the first three and et al. once a work has more than six (Curtin University Library, 2026). When to use et al. has every threshold.
Footnotes on a slide
Sheridan College's library says APA discourages footnotes for citations in essays but has no rule for decks (Sheridan College Library and Learning Services, 2026). Our view: keep author-date citations on the slide and save footnotes for caveats.
How do I cite images in a presentation?
Credit the image or chart directly beneath it, in smaller type, as Himmelfarb advises for APA, and give the source in full at the end unless the caption carries everything.
APA 7
The licence decides. If it needs no attribution, APA asks for none; if it asks for credit, a figure note carries a copyright attribution and the reference list an entry. On a slide the figure number and title are optional; the note is not. Clip art supplied with PowerPoint needs no attribution (American Psychological Association, 2020a). A public-domain source's note ends "In the public domain." (American Psychological Association, 2021).
MLA 9
A merely illustrative image gets full publication details in its caption; if you cite its source elsewhere, the caption needs only enough to lead to the works-cited entry (Modern Language Association, 2019). The styles split on clip art: an eighth-edition MLA post builds an entry for PowerPoint clip art you discuss (Modern Language Association, 2017), where APA asks for nothing.
Chicago author-date
Curtin's guide has the fullest slide rules we found: number and title under each figure, a "Source:" line under a reproduced chart, a List of Figures slide with full caption details, then the reference list last.
A worked example: one slide in three styles (ours)
The slide is ours; its sources are real, read on 2 October 2026. Slide 4 of a class talk on coral reefs:
Heat, not local pressure, drives mass bleaching
- Bleaching begins when heat passes what corals and their algae tolerate (Hoegh-Guldberg, 1999)
- In 2016, water quality and fishing pressure made little difference (Hughes et al., 2017)
[Map: sea surface temperature anomalies, 4 March 2024]
In APA 7, under the map:
Note. From Heat Stress on the Great Barrier Reef, by E. Cassidy, 2024, NASA Earth Observatory (https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/heat-stress-on-the-great-barrier-reef-152561/). In the public domain.
NASA says its images are generally not subject to US copyright and asks to be credited (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, n.d.). The map uses Australian reef data too, so check before a deck goes beyond your class. The page credits the map to Michala Garrison; we name the page's author because the entry is for the page.
In MLA 9 the citations become (Hoegh-Guldberg) and (Hughes et al.), and the caption, keyed to the Works Cited slide, reads Fig. 1. Map from Cassidy, “Heat Stress on the Great Barrier Reef.” In Chicago author-date they become (Hoegh-Guldberg 1999) and (Hughes et al. 2017), with Figure 1. Sea surface temperature anomalies, 4 March 2024 under the map and Source: Figure reproduced from Cassidy (2024). below that.
The speaker notes for slide 4
SLIDE 4 [by 3:00]
SAY: "Terry Hughes and 45 co-authors, in Nature, 2017"
2016: water quality + fishing = little difference [PAUSE]
POINT: "NASA, 4 March 2024: warmer than the 2003 to 2014 average"
On slide: (Hughes et al., 2017) + map note. Full entries: slide 12.
How do I cite sources in speaker notes?
Write each source in the form you will say it and, if anyone else will read the notes, add the in-text citation the slide carries. The APA, MLA and Chicago pages we searched say nothing about speaker notes. Notes never replace the slide's citation: the room sees only the slide, where Chicago advises a credit for a quotation or data (University of Chicago Press, n.d.).
Notes only you will see
The citation is a cue: the spoken form, before the claim, as above. Sheridan College Library and Learning Services (2026), whose examples are APA, asks for in-text citations in both places, slides and notes.
Notes someone else will read
Notes handed in, or shared inside the file, are read by someone who was not there, so they cite like a paper: "Hughes et al. (2017) found that water quality and fishing pressure had minimal effect on the 2016 bleaching." Briefs that ask for notes are covered in how to write speaker notes; printing notes pages, in speaker notes in PowerPoint, Google Slides and Keynote.
What is the right references slide format?
Title it References in APA and Chicago author-date, Works Cited in MLA; list entries alphabetically with the style's punctuation and hanging indents; place it after your last content slide. For APA, Himmelfarb accepts single spacing and a smaller font. When the list runs long, use two slides rather than shrinking it past what the back row can read, and if the deck will not be shared, see turning speaker notes into a handout.
How do I cite a presentation or someone else's slides?
Cite the slides or the talk you can point to, and the research behind a lecture where you can:
- APA 7, slides: Presenter, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title [PowerPoint slides]. Site Name. URL. Slides your audience cannot open are a personal communication (American Psychological Association, 2020c).
- APA 7, a conference talk: Presenter, A. A. (Year, Month Day–Day). Title [Conference presentation]. Conference Name, City, State, Country (American Psychological Association, 2020b).
- APA 7, an unrecorded lecture: a personal communication, in the text only; better, the research it drew on (American Psychological Association, 2019).
- MLA 9, slides on a platform: the platform as container, "uploaded by", the date, the address, and optionally PowerPoint presentation (Modern Language Association, 2020).
- MLA 9, a talk you attended: the talk, not your notes: presenter, "Title," meeting, date, place or "online" (Modern Language Association, 2026).
- Chicago author-date, slides: Surname, First. Year. "Title." PowerPoint slides. URL (Curtin University Library, 2026).
Which EdCitation tool builds the references slide in APA, MLA and Chicago?
EdCitation's Cite a source is the right tool for the references slide, because it reads each entry from the publisher's record instead of composing one, which no chatbot does: for Hughes et al. (2017) it read all 46 authors from Crossref and cut the list where each style cuts it. Give it a DOI, a PubMed ID, an ISBN, a title or a web address and it returns the entry in six styles (APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver), checks the source for retraction, and costs nothing, with no account. Every word on your slides stays your own; EdCitation supplies the record behind each reference.
Two DOIs
For 10.1038/nature21707 and 10.1071/MF99078 it read Crossref and found no retraction notice; our APA 7 references below are exactly as returned. In Chicago author-date:
Hughes, Terry P., James T. Kerry, Mariana Álvarez-Noriega, et al. 2017. “Global Warming and Recurrent Mass Bleaching of Corals.” Nature 543 (7645): 373–77. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21707.
Accents kept; nothing to correct.
A web page with an image
For the NASA page it found the title and date but no author, filed the page as news, and returned in APA 7:
Heat stress on the great barrier reef. (2024, March 18). NASA Science. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/heat-stress-on-the-great-barrier-reef-152561/
The page's foot reads "Story by Emily Cassidy". What the tool reads from a page can be edited before the entry is made, so we added Emily Cassidy as author and NASA Earth Observatory, from the page's credit line, as the site:
Cassidy, E. (2024, March 18). Heat stress on the great barrier reef. NASA Earth Observatory. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/heat-stress-on-the-great-barrier-reef-152561/
Change by hand: APA's sentence case keeps proper names, so restore Great Barrier Reef; both runs lowered it. MLA and Chicago keep the title's capitals and needed nothing:
Cassidy, Emily. “Heat Stress on the Great Barrier Reef.” NASA Earth Observatory, 18 Mar. 2024, https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/heat-stress-on-the-great-barrier-reef-152561/.
The figure note and caption are yours to write from the entry.
Checking the slide
Pasted into Verify references, also free, all three APA entries came back verified; for both articles the reason given was "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches". With a free account the list is saved and downloads in Word, BibTeX or RIS form. If the talk comes with a written report, References from a file (Pro, $8 a month) checks every reference in the uploaded file and pairs each in-text citation with its entry.
The whole deck, step by step
- Read the brief; Check your paper turns its instructions into a checklist, citation style included.
- Find sources with Find sources, about 300 million published works.
- Build each entry in APA, MLA or Chicago.
- Cite beside each claim; credit each borrowed image.
- Write each source's spoken form into your notes.
- Put the full list last, after any list of figures.
- Check it with Verify references.
Quick questions
How do I cite sources in a PowerPoint in APA?
Put (Author, Year) beside the claim and the full entry on a References slide, built free by EdCitation's Cite a source.
What does an MLA citation in a presentation look like?
The surname in brackets beside the claim, such as (Hughes et al.), and a Works Cited list as the final slide.
How do I cite an image in a presentation?
Directly under it: an APA figure note when the licence asks for credit, an MLA caption, or a Chicago figure number with a "Source:" line, plus the full entry at the end.
Should citations go in the speaker notes?
Yes, in the form you will say aloud, and written out if others will read the notes. They never replace the slide's citation, the only one the audience sees.
Can EdCitation make my slides or write my notes?
No. Nothing in EdCitation writes slides, notes or any other part of your work. It finds sources, fetches each reference's record and checks your list; every word you show and say is yours.
References
- American Psychological Association. (2019). Personal communications. APA Style. https://web.archive.org/web/20260930183200/https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/personal-communications
- American Psychological Association. (2020a). Clip art or stock image references. APA Style. https://web.archive.org/web/20260913004430/https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/clip-art-references
- American Psychological Association. (2020b). Conference presentation references. APA Style. https://web.archive.org/web/20260908130058/https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/conference-presentation-references
- American Psychological Association. (2020c). PowerPoint slide or lecture note references. APA Style. https://web.archive.org/web/20260825121922/https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/powerpoint-references
- American Psychological Association. (2021). Sample figures. APA Style. https://web.archive.org/web/20260914043437/https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/tables-figures/sample-figures
- Cassidy, E. (2024, March 18). Heat stress on the Great Barrier Reef. NASA Earth Observatory. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/heat-stress-on-the-great-barrier-reef-152561/
- Curtin University Library. (2026, July 16). UniSkills @ Curtin Library: Chicago 18th author-date [PDF]. https://uniskills.library.curtin.edu.au/assets/docs/Chicago-18th-Author-Date-referencing-printable-guide-UniSkills.pdf
- George Washington University Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library. (2026, August 19). Lecture/PPT. APA Citation Style, 7th edition. https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/APA/lecture
- Hoegh-Guldberg, O. (1999). Climate change, coral bleaching and the future of the world’s coral reefs. Marine and Freshwater Research, 50(8), 839–866. https://doi.org/10.1071/MF99078
- Hughes, T. P., Kerry, J. T., Álvarez-Noriega, M., Álvarez-Romero, J. G., Anderson, K. D., Baird, A. H., Babcock, R. C., Beger, M., Bellwood, D. R., Berkelmans, R., Bridge, T. C., Butler, I. R., Byrne, M., Cantin, N. E., Comeau, S., Connolly, S. R., Cumming, G. S., Dalton, S. J., Diaz-Pulido, G., … Wilson, S. K. (2017). Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals. Nature, 543(7645), 373–377. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21707
- Hume-Pratuch, J. (2010, September 17). Dear professor... your students have questions we can't answer. APA Style Blog. https://web.archive.org/web/20250126014243/https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/09/dear-professor.html
- McGill University Library. (2026, September 22). MLA (9th edition). Citation style guide. https://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/citations/mla
- Modern Language Association. (2017, October 20). How do I cite clip art from a computer program like PowerPoint? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/citing-clip-art/
- Modern Language Association. (2018, March 2). How do I cite an image from a slide presentation on the web or from a lecture I attend? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/citing_slides/
- Modern Language Association. (2019, May 15). How do I cite photographs or other images that I use in a PowerPoint presentation or web project? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/image-citations-slides-web-project/
- Modern Language Association. (2020, September 15). How do I cite a slide presentation uploaded by an instructor to a learning management system? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/slide-presentation-lms/
- Modern Language Association. (2026, June 17). Should I cite notes I took on a lecture or other type of presentation? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/notes-presentation/
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (n.d.). Images and media usage guidelines. NASA Brand Center. https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/
- Sheridan College Library and Learning Services. (2026, September 28). Citing your sources on slides. PSB Presentation Skills. https://sheridancollege.libguides.com/psb-presentation-skills-module/creating-your-presentation/citing-your-sources-on-slides
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.). Citation, documentation of sources (Q&A No. 453). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0453.html