Citation & Reference Cross-checker
Match every citation to its reference
Your text is processed locally by this tool — it isn't sent to Wibble. Free, no account.
Supports APA-style author–year citations — (Smith, 2020), Smith (2020), “et al.”, &/and — and numbered citations — [1], [2,3], [4-6]. Parsing is heuristic: unusual or mixed reference formats may not parse.
How it works
Paste your document body in one box and your reference list in the other. The cross-checker pulls every in-text citation — parenthetical '(Smith, 2020)' and narrative 'Smith (2020)' for APA-style, or '[3]' and '[4-6]' for numbered — and every reference entry, then matches them both ways. It reports in-text citations with no matching reference, references you never cited, author/year near-misses, duplicate entries, and gaps in numbered lists. It auto-detects which style your document uses.
Example
A citation year that doesn't match the reference
Suppose the body cites '(Okonkwo, 2021)' but the reference list only contains 'Okonkwo, A. (2019)…'. The cross-checker reports a mismatch — same lead author, different year — instead of quietly passing it or calling the reference uncited. It catches the inverse too: a reference that no in-text citation ever points to.
Limitations
- It's a format heuristic tuned for APA-style author-year and numbered citations. Footnote/endnote styles (Chicago notes, IEEE-in-footnotes) and unusual punctuation may parse only partially, or not at all.
- Matching keys on the lead author surname and year, so two different works with the same surname and year can be conflated; a bare '(Smith, 2020)' is flagged as ambiguous when the list has two such works.
- It checks that citations and references line up — not that the sources are real, relevant, or correctly formatted. A fabricated reference that's cited consistently will pass.
- Author near-misses use edit distance, so an unusual name change or transliteration difference may be missed or over-reported.
- Titles are split at the first sentence-ending period, and abbreviations whose trailing dot isn't a real boundary are recognized from a curated list (Fig., Eq., Vol., Dr., et al., and the like). An unusual abbreviation followed by '. ' that isn't on the list may still split a title early, which can make two distinct works look like one.
- The reference list has to be pasted as an actual list; prose that names authors without a formatted entry won't be recognized as references.
Frequently asked questions
Does this send my document anywhere?
No. Both the body text and the reference list are analyzed locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded to Wibble or any server, stored, or logged. You can work offline once the page has loaded, which suits the private, unpublished drafts you don't want to paste into a cloud tool.
Which citation styles does it understand?
Author-year styles in the APA family — '(Smith, 2020)', 'Smith (2020)', 'Smith et al., 2020', with '&' or 'and' — and numbered styles like '[3]', '[2,3]', and '[4-6]'. It auto-detects which one your document uses. Footnote-based and heavily abbreviated formats may only partially parse.
What's the difference between 'missing' and 'uncited'?
A missing citation appears in your body but has no matching reference entry — usually a forgotten or mistyped reference. An uncited reference is the opposite: listed at the end but never cited in the body, so it either needs a citation or should be removed.
Why is a citation flagged as 'ambiguous'?
When your reference list has two different works by the same author in the same year — say two 2020 papers by Smith — a plain '(Smith, 2020)' could mean either. The tool asks you to add year suffixes like 2020a and 2020b so each in-text citation points to a single entry.
Does it verify that my sources actually exist?
No. It only checks internal consistency between your in-text citations and your reference list. It can't tell whether a paper is real, says what you claim, or is formatted correctly. To have genuine, verifiable sources found and cited for you, see Wibble's Citations plans.
Need real sources? Wibble's Starter plan generates real, verified citations with a bibliography.
See citation plans