Citations

The history of The Chicago Manual of Style spans more than one hundred years, beginning in 1891 when the University of Chicago Press first opened its doors. It is most commonly used by writers in the fields of History, Literature, and the Arts.

Both the Chicago style and the Turabian style are considered Chicago. The main difference is that Turabian is the student version of the Chicago style, intended for college students who are writing essays and research that is not intended for publication. The Chicago Manual of Style is aimed at professional scholars, advanced students, and publishers.  If you are writing a thesis or dissertation and need Turabian style citation help, please refer to the Turabian Manual. Turabian provides documentation systems that are essentially the same as The Chicago Manual of Style, with slight modifications for the needs of student writers.

Chicago Style features two different methods of citation that can be used:

1. Author-Date Style

• This method of citation uses specific parenthetical citations throughout your work and a bibliography at the end of your work, arranged in alphabetical order, that provides full details about your cited sources.

2. Footnotes-Bibliography Style 

• This method of citation employs footnotes or endnotes for specific citations and a bibliography at the end of your work, arranged in alphabetical order, that provides full details about your sources.

Resources for Chicago / Turabian Styles:

The University of Chicago Press, publisher or the Chicago Manual of Style and the Turabian Manual for Writers would like for those manuals to the principal reference for writing research papers in those styles.  

Here is the basic model for citing books in the Chicago Notes and Bibliography system.

Footnote or endnote:

1. First name Last name, Title of Book (Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication), page number.

Corresponding bibliographical entry:

Last name, First name. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication.

When using Chicago Notes-Bibliography system, in-text references will have numbers and corresponding footnotes. The Author-Date system with have in-text citations with the author's name like this: (Author’s Last Name publication date, page(s) cited).  Look at the style guide. 

Style manuals have very specific formatting instructions.  Look at the guidelines while writing.  Here are some areas that cause students trouble:

• In the note format use first name last name, in bibliography format use last name, first name.
• In your notes, do not reuse numbers. Each citation gets a new number.
• Pay attention to indents. Notes use a first line indent, a bibliography uses a hanging indent.
• A bibliography goes in alphabetical order by author (or title if there is no author). Notes are numbered and are listed in the order the sources are used.
• Don't put "Works Cited" at the top of your bibliography.
• Citations generated by databases and citation managers can be incorrect, especially in the capitalization of titles. 
• Generative AI produce hallucinations as citations.