This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD and by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA. Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014.
This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources.
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Citing a website in your research paper or essay can be frustrating, but there are a few techniques you can use to find the publication date. You can check the website itself, view its source code, or use a tool like the Wayback Machine to see when the page was published. If you can't find the publication date of a webpage, you may be able to cite it as a “no date” page. This wikiHow will show you how to find the publication date of a website for citing.
Look under the headline of an article or post for a publication date. If there isn't one, check the bottom of the page for a copyright date, or use the Wayback Machine to find the original publication date. You can also search the source code for "date" or "published."
Variation: If you don’t see the date on the article, see if you can go back to the website’s homepage or search engine to look for it that way. You may see the publication date next to the article’s link or thumbnail.
Tip: A copyright date is usually only listed by the year and does not contain a specific month or day.
Variation: The keyboard shortcut to open the source code directly is Control+U on Windows and Command+U on Mac.
Variation: You can also access the “Find” function by clicking Edit in the top menu bar and clicking “Find…” in the drop-down menu.
Variation: If there is no date, don’t worry. You can instead use the date you accessed the website, which you’ll put after the URL. Here’s an example: Aranda, Arianna. “Understanding Expressive Poems.” Poetry Scholar, www.www.poetryscholar.com/understanding-expressive-poems. Accessed 9 April 2019.
Variation: If there’s no date, you can use “n.d.” instead of the year. For instance, you’d write this: American Robotics Club. (n.d.). Building Complex Robots. Retrieved from www.americanroboticsclub.com/building-complex-robots
Variation: If you don’t have a date, you can use the date you accessed the site. Use the same format, but write “Accessed” instead of “Last modified” before the date. For instance: Li, Quan. “Examining Art.” Insights into Culture. Accessed April, 9, 2019. www.insightsintoculture.com/examining-art.
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