Chicago Manual of Style (Notes-Bibliography System)

When using Chicago citation style, you will be generally be creating two (2) different types of citations; Notes (footnotes or endnotes) and full citations in your Bibliography. 

Notes may be footnotes or endnotes that are assigned a superscript number and corresponds to the number in the body of the text. It is meant to show the reader that the information being read was not your original content, that you are attributing it to a source, what that source is and how they may find it in your Bibliography and out in scholarly resources. 

Bibliographic citations are the full citation and appear in your Bibliography page in alphabetical order. They help you and the reader organize the information from the original source that you are using for your research.

Author(s)

N: List the author name(s) in natural order (first name last name).  Put a comma after each name. B: List the first author name in reverse order (last name, first name). List the subsequent names in natural order (first name last name).  Put a comma between the names. Include "and" before the last author. Put a period after the last author.

• More than one author (14.76)
  • N: List up to four authors. If more than 4 authors, list the first author followed by "et al." (meaning "and others") For example: Clark, David, et al. 
  • B: List all the authors.  If more than 10 authors, list the first 7 authors followed by "et al."
• No author
  • ​When there is no author, start with the article title or the book title.

Book Title - Capitalize all words. Put in italics.

Do not capitalize the following:

• articles (the, a, an) and
• conjunctions (and, but, for, or, nor).

Publication information

N: Enclose the publication information in parenthesis. Put a comma after the parenthesis.

Example: (Place of publication: Publisher, year),

B: Include the publication information without parenthesis. Put a period at the end.

Example: Place of publication: Publisher, year.

Page number

N: List the specific page(s) referenced.  End with a period.

B: For articles or chapters, list the range of page numbers.  For entire book, no need to list page numbers. 

Notes are numbered and they correspond to the super-scripted numbers in the body of the text.

There are two types of notes:

• Footnotes are found at the bottom of each page.
• Endnotes are found at the end of the document as a separate page.  It is titled “Notes” and appears before the “Bibliography” page.

When citing your sources:

• First, determine what type of resource your are citing (e.g., book, newspaper article, magazine article, journal article, web site). The note format for citing each type of resource is different.
• Once you determine which type of resource your are citing, then follow the instructions for that specific type of resource as detailed in this guide.

Full Notes vs. Concise Notes

• Full Notes – List the complete citation of a resource when it is used the first time.
• Repeated Citations - The use of ibid. is no longer preferred for repeated citations. If the citation is the same as the one immediately preceding it, use a shortened citation that includes the author’s last name and relevant pages numbers.
• Concise Notes – Use concise notes format when the same reference has already been noted previously, but not immediately prior. Include only the author(s) last name(s), shorten title (no more than four words), and page number(s). Do not include publication information.

EXAMPLES

Full Note

1. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A Rouge Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (New York: William Morrow, 2005), 63.

2. Levitt and Dubner, 333.

Concise Note

10. Levitt and Dubner, Freakonomics, 63.