French citation norms are a family of house styles built on one standard, NF ISO 690, which AFNOR publishes and sells. EdCitation publishes this guide, drawn from ten university guides in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Québec and two pages from Québec's language office, all read on 26 September 2026. French quotations are short; the English translations in brackets are ours.
EdCitation's Cite a source does not build NF ISO 690 or a French APA; its six styles are in English. What works for a French list is Verify references, which checks each entry against the publisher's record in any style, and Find sources, which searches French-language literature, both free with no account. We ran both on French material.
What is NF ISO 690, and what does it actually require?
NF ISO 690 is the French adoption of ISO 690:2010, the international guideline for bibliographic references and citations. AFNOR's catalogue lists it as published in August 2010, 48 pages, and "En vigueur" (in force), replacing the 1987 fascicule Z44-005 and NF ISO 690-2 of 1998 on electronic documents (AFNOR, 2010).
The standard sets out which elements a reference needs, not a layout. AFNOR's own summary of ISO 690:2010 says the standard "ne donne aucune consigne de mise en forme" (gives no formatting instructions, our translation), and that the style and punctuation of its examples are not normative (AFNOR, 2021). So each library that teaches "ISO 690" chose its own punctuation, and they chose differently.
The 2021 revision, and what we could not read
Internationally, ISO 690:2021, the fourth edition, 160 pages, replaced the 2010 text in June 2021 (AFNOR, 2021). AFNOR also lists a French draft, PR NF ISO 690, dated April 2020, 286 pages, built on the ISO draft of that revision (AFNOR, 2020). The NF ISO 690 page still showed the 2010 text in force. The Haute école de gestion de Genève (2025) bases its guide on "la norme ISO 690 (ISO 2021)".
The standards are sold, so we have not read their clauses; everything below on layout comes from university guides, as your marker's expectations do.
How do French, Belgian, Swiss and Québec libraries teach it?
In France
Université de Lorraine (2022) offers two methods, author-date and numbered, and puts the year straight after the name: "NOM, Prénom des auteurs, Année de publication". Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne (2026) writes the author as "NOM, Prénom", puts the year near the end of the entry, introduces a chapter with "Dans :", lists up to three authors and adds "et al." after that, and writes "[s. d.]" (sans date, no date) when there is no year.
Université de Limoges (n.d.) teaches footnotes and sets out its bibliography in the EHESS style rather than ISO 690.
In Belgium and Switzerland
The Université catholique de Louvain (n.d.) summary table writes "In" rather than "Dans", puts the year after the publisher, and in its own examples uses both "et al." and "et alii". Geneva's Haute école de gestion teaches author-date with no comma before the year, as in "(Whittington et al. 2020, p. 151)", and advises against notes, which it says repeat the bibliography. Université de Fribourg (2018), for all work at its French-language social work chair, sets out footnotes, with surnames in small capitals and initials for forenames.
Where the libraries disagree
- Where the year goes: after the name (Lorraine, Geneva) or near the end (Reims, Louvain).
- "In" or "Dans": Lorraine and Louvain write "In :"; Reims writes "Dans :"; Université Paris Nanterre (n.d.) says to avoid "in" in every case and to use "dans" only for a chapter, never for a journal article.
Your department's rule wins. Where none is given, apply one model consistently throughout, which Nanterre calls the essential point.
How do footnotes work with ibid., op. cit., art. cit. and loc. cit.?
The first note gives the full reference; later notes shorten it. The Latin abbreviations and their history are in ibid., op. cit. and loc. cit. explained; what French guides add is art. cit.
Limoges uses "Ibid." when the same work is cited in the note immediately after, and op. cit. when it returns later. Nanterre uses op. cit. for a book and "art. cit. ou loc. cit." (art. cit. or loc. cit.) for an article. Fribourg keeps loc. cit. for articles, and allows "Ibid." only when consecutive notes fall on the same page of your document; on a new page, the author and title return. Fribourg also advises adding the abbreviations only in the final version, so that moving a paragraph does not break the chain.
A run of notes, on Nanterre's model
The works are real and checked against their records; the page numbers stand for the page you quote.
- Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction : critique sociale du jugement, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1979, p. 9.
- Ibid., p. 12.
- Sylvie Célérier, « Activité ou salariat ? Nouons une controverse autour du travail », Sociologie et sociétés, vol. 48, n° 1, 2016, p. 40.
- Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction, op. cit., p. 25.
- Sylvie Célérier, « Activité ou salariat ? », art. cit., p. 42.
How is APA used in French, in Québec and elsewhere?
APA has no official French edition, so universities adapt it. The Université de Montréal libraries say so: "Il n'existe pas de traduction officielle des normes de l'APA en français" (there is no official French translation of the APA standards, our translation), and their guide is an adaptation for the university's own community (Université de Montréal, 2026).
It translates these elements and keeps the rest of APA 7:
- "&" becomes "et", so a two-author citation reads (Tardif et Gauthier, 1999).
- n.d. becomes s. d., and in press becomes sous presse.
- "In" becomes "Dans", and Ed(s). becomes dir.
- pp. becomes p., which the guide says the OQLF considers dated in French.
- "Retrieved… from" becomes "Repéré le… à", and English quotation marks become guillemets.
It keeps "et al.", which it calls accepted and widespread in French, noting that some contexts suggest "et coll.". The rules for APA 7 in-text citations otherwise stand.
Belgium keeps more of the English
Louvain's APA summary, dated May 2026, keeps the ampersand, "n.d." and "in press" (Université catholique de Louvain, 2026). A Belgian and a Québec APA list can both be correct and still differ; follow the one your department names.
NF ISO 690 or APA in French: how do the entries differ?
The table sets one real article, Célérier (2016), in Lorraine's ISO 690 and Montréal's APA.
| Element | NF ISO 690 practice (library templates) | Author-date, APA in French (Montréal) | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | NOM, Prénom, surname in capitals | Nom, initiale. | CÉLÉRIER, Sylvie / Célérier, S. |
| Year | After the name, or near the end (Reims) | In brackets after the name | 2016. / (2016). |
| No date | [s. d.] (Reims) | s. d. | [s. d.] / (s. d.) |
| Several authors | Beyond three, the first three names then "et al." (Reims) | "et" before the last; "et al." in the text from three authors | (Tardif et Gauthier, 1999) |
| Journal and numbering | Titre. Année. Vol. 48, n° 1, p. 35-57 | Titre, 48(1), 35-57 | Sociologie et sociétés |
| Online | DOI 10.… ; for a web page, "Disponible à l'adresse" and "[consulté le …]" | https://doi.org/… ; "Repéré le … à" for a page that changes | DOI 10.7202/1036882ar |
| Checking the entry | By hand against the record, or with Verify references | The same | Both forms verified in our run |
In full, on Lorraine's model:
CÉLÉRIER, Sylvie, 2016. Activité ou salariat ? Nouons une controverse autour du travail. Sociologie et sociétés. 2016. Vol. 48, n° 1, p. 35-57. DOI 10.7202/1036882ar.
In APA in French:
Célérier, S. (2016). Activité ou salariat ? Nouons une controverse autour du travail. Sociologie et sociétés, 48(1), 35-57. https://doi.org/10.7202/1036882ar
Which French typographic rules change a reference?
Four rules change how a French reference looks.
- Surnames in capitals. The Office québécois de la langue française (n.d.-a) writes the main author's surname "entièrement en majuscules ou en petites capitales" (entirely in capitals or small capitals, our translation). Fribourg asks for small capitals; Nanterre allows them in the bibliography only.
- Spaces around punctuation. The OQLF (n.d.-b) puts a non-breaking space before the colon and inside guillemets, and a narrower fixed space before the question mark, exclamation mark and semicolon. Hence Reims's "Malakoff : Dunod".
- Guillemets. Nanterre asks for « … », not English quotation marks, and the OQLF, like Nanterre, puts article titles inside them.
- Et al., et coll. or et collab. Beyond three authors, the OQLF prefers "et autres" or "et collab." to "et al.", which Montréal, Reims, Geneva and Louvain keep. See when to use et al. for the English styles.
Title capitals differ from English too: Nanterre capitalises only an article title's first word, and a book title's first noun, as in Le Problème du mal.
What goes in a French bibliographie?
A French bibliographie is the alphabetical list of works a paper relied on, at the end, headed "Bibliographie" or "Références bibliographiques" (Université de Limoges, n.d.). The guides agree on order and disagree on content.
- Order. Alphabetical by author, and one author's works by date (Lorraine, Fribourg). Reims allows sections by theme or kind of document, each alphabetical.
- Sections. Nanterre separates primary sources, the corpus you study, from secondary literature.
- What is included. Fribourg includes works read but not cited if they shaped the argument; Louvain's APA guide lists only works cited in the text.
The difference from an English "reference list" is covered in reference list, bibliography or works cited.
How can EdCitation help with a French reference list?
EdCitation is the right tool for checking a French list because it looks every reference up in the publisher's record, in any style, and never writes one: in our tests, four French articles matched their publishers' Crossref records and a French book a library catalogue. EdCitation never writes any part of a student's paper.
Cite a source: six English styles, adjusted by hand
Cite a source builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver, in English, and no other styles. For APA in French, start from the APA 7 entry and make Montréal's changes by hand. For ISO 690, rebuild the entry on your library's template from the record's details.
Check these points from our run by hand. The entries kept French capitals, "Sociologie et sociétés" and "Activité ou salariat ? Nouons une controverse autour du travail", and read the Futuribles record's volume "N° 453" as 453. But the entry for Grenouilloux (2023) dropped the record's space before the colon ("psychiatrie: Quelle") while keeping the one before the question mark, and APA capitalises the word after a colon, where Nanterre would not: restore the space and the small letter if your course follows French typography.
Verify references on a French list
We pasted five French references into Verify references in Lorraine's ISO 690 form, four articles with DOIs and a book with an ISBN. All five came back verified. The book's reason read "The ISBN leads to this book in a library catalogue, and its title matches"; each article's, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches". Accents, French spaces and capitalised surnames did not stop a match.
A second list, in APA in French with no DOIs or ISBNs and Soares (2025) in place of Spurk, was verified again, on "Title, year and first author match a published record" (for Bourdieu, a catalogue record). For a whole paper, Pro's References from a file ($8 a month) also matches each citation in the text to the list.
Find sources in French
We searched Find sources for "épuisement professionnel des enseignants" (teacher burnout): 2,593,335 results from Crossref. The first three were French-language studies of teacher burnout, among them Chennoufi and colleagues' 2012 paper in L'Encéphale, cited 41 times. None of the next seven was about burnout; they matched "professionnel des enseignants", among them 1999 chapters on a professional order for Québec teachers. There is no language filter, so add a subject word.
Check your paper on a French brief
Check your paper, free, reads an assignment's instructions into a checklist, each rule shown with its sentence. It does not yet read French briefs reliably. Given Nanterre's master's guide, it returned 70 to 100 pages, the M2 figure, dropping the M1 figure of about 50 pages from the same sentence. From the PDF it also set a "Sources" target of 2, read from the page number above "REFERENCES BIBLIOGRAPHIQUES". It missed the line spacing, font size, guillemets and required bibliography, and set one sentence aside as not checkable.
Given Fribourg's guide, it read Times New Roman correctly but gave the size as 6 pt (the guide says 11; 6 pt is its paragraph spacing), and made a page-numbers rule from a sentence about article page ranges. Read each rule against its quoted sentence.
Quick questions
Is NF ISO 690 the same as ISO 690?
NF ISO 690 is AFNOR's French adoption of ISO 690:2010, published in August 2010. ISO has since issued ISO 690:2021, and AFNOR lists a French draft of the revision, but its catalogue still shows the 2010 text in force.
Can I write et al. in a French paper?
Usually yes: Reims, Geneva, Louvain and the Montréal APA guide use it. The OQLF prefers "et autres" or "et collab."; your department decides.
What does art. cit. mean in a footnote?
Art. cit. points back to an article already given in full in an earlier note, as op. cit. does for a book. Nanterre allows art. cit. or loc. cit. for this; Fribourg uses loc. cit.
Does EdCitation build NF ISO 690 references?
No. EdCitation's Cite a source builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver in English; a French APA entry can start from its APA 7 entry and be adjusted by hand, and Verify references checks a list in any style.
References
- AFNOR. (2010). NF ISO 690: Information et documentation - Principes directeurs pour la rédaction des références bibliographiques et des citations des ressources d'information [Catalogue entry]. AFNOR Éditions. https://www.boutique.afnor.org/fr-fr/norme/nf-iso-690/information-et-documentation-principes-directeurs-pour-la-redaction-des-references-bibli/fa153497/1090
- AFNOR. (2020). PR NF ISO 690: Information et documentation [Catalogue entry for a draft standard]. AFNOR Éditions. https://www.boutique.afnor.org/fr-fr/norme/pr-nf-iso-690/information-et-documentation-principes-directeurs-pour-la-redaction-des-references-bibli/fa198411/339891
- AFNOR. (2021). ISO 690:2021: Information et documentation [Catalogue entry]. AFNOR Éditions. https://www.boutique.afnor.org/fr-fr/norme/iso-6902021/information-et-documentation-principes-directeurs-pour-la-redaction-des-references-bibli/xs136402/241030
- Célérier, S. (2016). Activité ou salariat ? Nouons une controverse autour du travail. Sociologie et sociétés, 48(1), 35–57. https://doi.org/10.7202/1036882ar
- Grenouilloux, A. (2023). Numérisation, automatisation en psychiatrie : quelle garantie humaine ? L'information psychiatrique, 99(2), 83–90. https://doi.org/10.1684/ipe.2023.2549
- Haute école de gestion de Genève. (2025). Guide REF: Guide pratique de citation et référencement des sources (Version 5.3.2) [PDF]. https://heg.hesge.ch/media/921
- Office québécois de la langue française. (n.d.-a). Éléments des notices bibliographiques. Banque de dépannage linguistique. https://vitrinelinguistique.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/23245/la-redaction-et-la-communication/bibliographie-et-citations/bibliographie-et-notices-bibliographiques/elements-des-notices-bibliographiques
- Office québécois de la langue française. (n.d.-b). Types d'espacement. Banque de dépannage linguistique. https://vitrinelinguistique.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/24565/la-typographie/espacement/types-despacement
- Soares, R. (2025). Intégrer au nom de la réussite ? La classe d'accueil comme discours officiel de l'intégration linguistique, scolaire et sociale au Québec. Alterstice, 13(2), 87–100. https://doi.org/10.7202/1125926ar
- Université catholique de Louvain. (n.d.). Tableau résumé de rédaction des références bibliographiques selon la norme ISO 690 [PDF]. Bibliothèques-learning centers. https://www.uclouvain.be/fr/system/files/uclouvain_assetmanager/groups/cms-editors-biul/Aide%20et%20formation%20-%20guides%20%26%20tutoriels/Biblio-Tableau%20r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9%20des%20normes%20ISO690.pdf
- Université catholique de Louvain. (2026). Abrégé des normes bibliographiques APA (7e édition) [PDF]. Bibliothèques-learning centers. https://www.uclouvain.be/fr/system/files/uclouvain_assetmanager/groups/cms-editors-biul/Aide%20et%20formation%20-%20guides%20&%20tutoriels/Abrege_normes_apa_7th_mai_2026.pdf
- Université de Fribourg. (2018). Les notes en bas de page et les références bibliographiques [PDF]. Chaire francophone de travail social et politiques sociales. https://www.unifr.ch/travsoc/fr/assets/public/Documents/Les-notes-de-bas-de-pages-et-la-bibilographie_Septembre-2018.pdf
- Université de Limoges. (n.d.). Bibliographie : gestion par notes de bas de page. Service commun de la documentation. https://www.unilim.fr/scd/formation/bibliographie-gestion-par-notes-de-bas-de-page/
- Université de Lorraine. (2022). Guide pour la rédaction de références bibliographiques: Style ISO-690:2010 [PDF]. Bibliothèques universitaires. https://bu.univ-lorraine.fr/sites/default/files/users/user779/Guide%20biblio%20ISO690%20%202022-2023.pdf
- Université de Montréal. (2026, August 28). À propos: Citer selon les normes de l'APA, 7e édition. Bibliothèques, La boîte à outils. https://boite-outils.bib.umontreal.ca/citer/apa
- Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne. (2026, January 8). Rédiger une bibliographie à partir de la norme ISO 690 [PDF]. Bibliothèque universitaire. https://www.univ-reims.fr/bu/media-files/7331/bibliographie__norme_iso690_bu_urca.pdf
- Université Paris Nanterre. (n.d.). Guide typographique et bibliographique pour la rédaction du mémoire [PDF]. https://www.parisnanterre.fr/medias/fichier/guide-typographique-et-bibliographique-pour-la-redaction-du-memoire-de-master_1452067576220-pdf