Chicago Style Citations: Format Citations As Per the Chicago Manual of Style
Here’s something for the humanities and social sciences researchers out there! If you’ve used style guides like APA or MLA, you know that they give you one citation style to follow: author-date or author-page number, respectively. But the Chicago Manual of Style, one of the most authoritative resources for publishers, editors, and authors, offers authors two citation styles to choose from! Which do you choose? And why? We’ve got some answers for you.
Chicago Citation Style 1: Author-Date Style
Social sciences folks, this is the style for you. Your in-text citation consist of the author last names(s), year of publication, and page numbers if the citation accompanies a direct quote.
(Al-Bahadur 2013)
(Laurence, Shah, and Tupsy 2019)
According to Duckworthy et al. (2020, 65-6), “the absence of any regulatory mechanisms must necessarily result in …”
When you’re citing a work with 4 or more authors, your in-text citation has the name of only the first author, followed by “et al.” without italics.
Chicago Citation Style 2: Notes and Bibliography
Folks specializing in literature, art history, media studies, etc.—you probably have a pretty long paper to write, with lots of citations. Or maybe you’re writing a monograph or book. Will your readers find it easy to navigate to a single reference list at the end? That’s why the Chicago Manual of Style gives you the option to use the “notes and bibliography” citation style.
- In-text citations go into footnotes placed at the bottom of every page.
- Indicate footnotes using a superscript number.
- Footnote numbers are placed at the end of the sentence after any punctuation mark.
And at the end, you create a separate Bibliography.
Chicago style notes can be of two types:
- Full Notes: Used the first time you cite a source
- Short Notes: For subsequent citations of a source
Full Notes in Chicago Style
Full notes provide complete details of the work being cited.
Here’s an example:
Mary Gibberyfish, The Little Dog Laughed: Trials of a Kennel Maid, 2nd ed. (London: Goandfindout Press, 2020), 87-98.
Short Notes in Chicago Style
Short notes are used when you’re citing the same work as you did earlier in the text. They’re meant to save you time and effort in providing the same details again and again.
Example:
Gibberyfish, Little Dog. 121-2.
Too much work? Just use “ibid.” (= in the same place) when your footnote repeats that appears immediately prior. Even if the page numbers are different, we can still use “ibid.” followed by a comma and then the new page numbers.
