Chicago Style (sometimes referred to as Turabian) is primarily used by History, Humanities, Business, Economics, Religion, Fine Arts, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences.
Chicago Style has two formats, so check with your instructor to be sure which one is required:
Here is a citation quick guide for Turabian/Chicago Notes and Bibliography and Author-Date Style.
N: Footnote citations : set of phrases set off by COMMAS, parentheses
B: Bibliography citations : indirect : set off by PERIODS
3 formats
N: Foot/endnotes
Shortened notes (for second mention)
B: Bibliography page (alphabetical order, hanging indent).
N: 3 Ehrhard Bahr, Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 190.
Shortened note: 5 Bahr, Weimar on the Pacific, 190.
B: Bahr, Ehrhard. Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
N: 2 Eamonn O'Keeffe, "Military Music and Society during the French Wars, 1793-1815," Historical Research 97, no. 275 (2024): 109, https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htad027.
Shortened note: 4 O'Keeffe, “Military Music,” 109.
B: O’Keeffe, Eamonn. “Military Music and Society during the French Wars, 1793–1815.” Historical Research 97, no. 275 (2024): 108–28. https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htad027.
N: 4 Firstname Lastname OR Publisher, “Title of Web Page,” Name of Website, Publishing Organization, revision/updated date, accessed date, URL.
Shortened note: 4 Lastname OR Publisher, “Title of Web Page.”
B: Lastname, Firstname OR Publisher. “Title of Web Page.” Name of Website. Publishing organization, Revised/Updated date. OR Accessed date. URL .
Three kinds of information are included for in-text/narrative citations:
Example from CMOS 15.5:
"Like many other cultural fields, the video game industry is one that rewards novelty, especially when it is packaged in terms that are recognizable to consumers and critics (Lampel, Lant, and Shamsie 2000; Hutter 2011). . . . But the forefront of the industry finds continuous experimentation with the singular challenge of video gaming: how to create a convincing form of narrative storytelling that is nonetheless animated, perhaps uniquely so, by the actions of the users (Bissell 2011)."
The reference list entries for the above in-text/narrative citations are below. They are alphabetically arranged and use a hanging indent. Use dois when available in the format of https://doi.#########.
Bissell, Tom. 2011. Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. New York: Vintage Books.
Hutter, Michael. 2011. “Infinite Surprises: Value in the Creative Industries.” In The Worth of Goods: Valuation and Pricing in the Economy, edited by Jens Beckert and Patrick Aspers, 201–20. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lampel, Joseph, Theresa Lant, and Jamal Shamsie. 2000. “Balancing Act: Learning from Organizing Practices in Cultural Industries.” Organization Science 11 (3): 263–69.
N: Footnote citations : set of phrases set off by COMMAS, parentheses
B: Bibliography citations : indirect : set off by PERIODS
3 formats
N: Foot/endnotes
Shortened notes (for second mention)
B: Bibliography page (alphabetical order)
N: 3 Ehrhard Bahr, Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism (University of California Press, 2007), 190.
Shortened note: 5 Bahr, Weimar on the Pacific, 190.
B: Bahr, Ehrhard. Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism. University of California Press, 2007.
N: 2 Eamonn O'Keeffe, "Military Music and Society during the French Wars, 1793-1815," Historical Research 97, no. 275 (2024): 109, https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htad027.
Shortened note: 4 O'Keeffe, “Military Music,” 109.
B: O’Keeffe, Eamonn. “Military Music and Society during the French Wars, 1793–1815.” Historical Research 97, no. 275 (2024): 108–28. https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htad027.
N: 4 Firstname Lastname OR Publisher, “Title of Web Page,” Name of Website, Publishing Organization, revised/updated date, OR accessed date, URL.
Shortened note: 4 Lastname OR Publisher, “Title of Web Page.”
B: Lastname, Firstname OR Publisher. “Title of Web Page.” Name of Website. Publishing organization, Revised/Updated date. OR Accessed date. URL .
Create a working bibliography as soon as you start research for your paper. Keep track of your paper's footnotes using the short citation form. Once you have your bibliography formatted, you can begin to format your footnotes.
To reformat to a footnote, you will:
For example, here's the bibliography entry in Chicago 17th edition format:
Goldmark, Daniel. Tunes for ‘Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520236172.001.0001.
The first footnote for a resource is longer than any subsequent notes. For example, the book from the sample looks like this as a footnote:
2. Goldmark, Tunes for ‘Toons, 95.
Be sure to check CMOS for each resource format.
(Not a complete list, just the most widely used)
If you would like to see all the differences between Chicago 17th and Chicago 18th editions, they are listed in entirety in the pdf below.