Chicago Style Citation: Notes, Bibliography and Author-Date

Chicago style citation comes from The Chicago Manual of Style and offers two systems: notes-bibliography, which uses footnotes, and author-date, which uses brief citations in brackets. Check which one your assignment requires before you start.

The current edition is the 18th, published in 2024; many courses still teach from the 17th. This guide shows both systems with examples and notes the main difference between editions.

Which System Should You Use?

If your brief does not say, follow your discipline. Humanities students almost always use notes-bibliography; science and social science students use author-date. When in doubt, ask your tutor before you write.

Students sometimes meet "Turabian", a version of Chicago adapted for student papers. Its citation rules follow Chicago closely, with extra guidance on formatting theses and coursework.

Notes-Bibliography: Footnotes

Place a superscript number at the end of the sentence or clause containing the borrowed material, after punctuation. The matching note gives the source and the specific page.

The first time you cite a source, give a full note. After that, use a short note: the author's surname, a shortened title and the page.

Full Note

1. Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States (W. W. Norton, 2018), 212.

Short Note

4. Lepore, These Truths, 219.

Matching Bibliography Entry

Lepore, Jill. These Truths: A History of the United States. W. W. Norton, 2018.

Notes use commas and give a page; bibliography entries use full stops, invert the first author's name for alphabetizing and omit page references for whole books.

Ibid.

Ibid. means "in the same place" and refers to the source in the note immediately before. Chicago discourages it in favor of the short note, which stays correct even if notes are reordered. Follow your tutor if they ask for it.

17th Versus 18th Edition

The most visible change for students concerns books. The 18th edition no longer requires the place of publication, so a book note gives the publisher and year only, as in the examples on this page.

If your course guide still shows the city, include it consistently. Either way, apply one edition throughout.

Notes-Bibliography Examples

Chapter in an Edited Book

2. Ngozi Okafor, "Motivation in Adult Learners," in Handbook of Adult Education, ed. Rana Patel (Routledge, 2019), 90.

Okafor, Ngozi. "Motivation in Adult Learners." In Handbook of Adult Education, edited by Rana Patel. Routledge, 2019.

Journal Article

3. Li Chen, "Memory and Form in the Postwar Novel," Modern Fiction Studies 67, no. 2 (2021): 18, https://doi.org/10.xxxx/mfs.2021.0002.

Chen, Li. "Memory and Form in the Postwar Novel." Modern Fiction Studies 67, no. 2 (2021): 15–34. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/mfs.2021.0002.

Web Page

5. "Adolescent Mental Health," World Health Organization, October 10, 2024, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets.

World Health Organization. "Adolescent Mental Health." October 10, 2024. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets.

Translated Work

6. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (Vintage, 2011), 44.

Archival Letter

8. Ada Lovelace to Charles Babbage, August 14, 1843, Babbage Papers, British Library, London.

Examples use illustrative details; check the real publication data, including DOIs, for your own sources. A chapter's bibliography entry may also give its page range.

Author-Date System

Cite the author's surname and year in brackets, with no comma between them, and add a page after a comma when you quote or refer to a specific passage.

Reference List Examples

Lepore, Jill. 2018. These Truths: A History of the United States. W. W. Norton.

Chen, Li. 2021. "Memory and Form in the Postwar Novel." Modern Fiction Studies 67 (2): 15–34.

In author-date the year moves up to sit straight after the author, so readers can match the in-text citation quickly. That is why a bibliography cannot simply be pasted in as a reference list.

Formatting a Chicago Paper

• A readable 12-point font, double-spaced body text and one-inch margins.
• Footnotes single-spaced within each note, with a blank line between notes.
• Block quotations of five or more lines, indented, with no quotation marks.
• Bibliography in alphabetical order with a hanging indent.
• Page numbers and title page as your department specifies.

Let your word processor insert footnotes so numbering updates automatically when you move paragraphs.

Common Chicago Mistakes

• Mixing footnotes and author-date citations in one paper.
• Giving a full note every time instead of switching to a short note.
• Copying a note's comma punctuation into the bibliography.
• Leaving out page numbers in notes for quotations or specific points.
• Putting a comma between author and year in author-date citations.
• Mixing 17th and 18th edition conventions.

How EssayDonkey Helps with Chicago Style

Send your topic or draft, your sources and the edition your course uses. A writer matched to your subject writes a custom paper, or formats your own, with notes and a bibliography or author-date citations in Chicago style.

Use it as a reference for how Chicago works in practice. Revisions within the scope of your original request are free.