History: Chicago Citation

The Chicago Manual of Style is the offical guide of Chicago citation formatting. You can find the manual at the reference desk and in the reference section of the library's collection.

Click the image for an informative example of a research paper with explanations of Chicago formatting:

Diana Hacker's guide to Chicago Style has extensive information on documentation.

The Purdue's Owl is another helpful resource for Chicago citation. This page provides information about citing (giving credit for any quotes, facts, paraphrases, or summaries in your paper). Check here for help with your bibliography page.

EasyBib  A guided citation builder -- entering your citation information and EasyBib will help you format your citation.

The last page of your essay is called the "Bibliography" page. This is where you list the full citation of your sources in Chicago Style format.

This page will help you create a Bibliography page.

When you use outside sources, you will need to create a Bibliography that tells your reader all the information they need to go find the source themselves if they want to.  Commonly used sources include:

Books

Carley, Michael J. 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II. Chicago: Dee, 1999.

Journal Articles

Bharadwaj, Parag, and Katherine T. Ward. “Ethical Considerations of Patients with Pacemakers.” American Family Physician 78 (2008): 398-99.

Websites

Satalkar, Bhakti. “Water Aerobics.” Buzzle.com. July 15, 2010. www.buzzle.com.

The style of Chicago/Turabian requires footnotes rather than in-text or parenthetical citations. Footnotes or endnotes acknowledge which parts of their paper reference particular sources. Generally, you want to provide the author’s name, publication title, publication information, date of publication, and page number(s) if it is the first time the source is being used. Any additional usage, simply use the author’s last name, publication title, and date of publication.

Footnotes should match with a superscript number at the end of the sentence referencing the source. You should begin with 1 and continue numerically throughout the paper. Do not start the order over on each page.

For example: 1. Henry James, The Ambassadors (Rockville: Serenity, 2009), 34-40.

When citing a source more than once, use a shortened version of the footnote: 2. James, The Ambassadors, 14.

Citing sources with more than one author

If there are two or three authors of the source, include their full names in the order they appear on the source. If there are more than three authors, list only the first author followed by “et al.” You should list all the authors in the bibliography;

Citing sources with no author

It may not be possible to find the author/contributor information; some sources may not even have an author or contributor- for instance, when you cite some websites. Simply omit the unknown information and continue with the footnote as usual:

Citing a part of a work

When citing a specific part of a work, provide the relevant page or section identifier. This can include specific pages, sections, or volumes. If page numbers cannot be referenced, simply exclude them. Below are different templates:

Chapter in a book:

Introduction, afterword, foreword, or preface:

Article in a periodical: