Chicago 18th edition author-date

About Chicago 18th author-date

The Chicago Manual of Style allows for two different types of reference styles. There is the Notes and Bibliography style, and the Author-Date System.  This Guide is for the Author-Date system which is a variation of the Notes and Bibliography style.

Most of the recommendations in the notes and bibliographies version of Chicago 18th edition are identical for the author-date system. 

To see how to translate from a notes-bibliography system to author-date see 14.1.

A major difference is that the year of publication appears immediately after the author’s name (13.102).

In this system, sources are briefly cited in the text, usually in parentheses, by author’s last name and year of publication. Each in-text citation matches up with an entry in a reference list, where full bibliographic information is provided.

An intext reference may look like: 

(Blanshard 2006, 151)

while its reference entry may look like:

Blanshard, Alastair. 2006. Hercules: A Heroic Life. London: Granta.

Any subsequent lines in a reference are on a hanging indent.  A hanging indent is an indent that indents all text except the first line (2.28).

Unlike notes and bibliography style, each entry in the reference list must correspond to a work cited in the text (13.115).

Punctuation marks and spaces within the citation are very important. Follow the punctuation and spacing as given in the examples.

Be careful where you input information into fields in the reference types in EndNote as the same information may need to be placed in different fields for different styles.  This is particularly relevant to inputting of dates.

• Up to six authors are now listed in a bibliography; if more than six, only the first three are listed
• Chicago now prefers repeating the names of the authors in a bibliography rather than using the 3-em dash method
• The page range for a cited chapter in an edited book is no longer required in a bibliography
• Place of publication is no longer required in citations of books.

This is the full list of changes.

It is important to understand the basics of referencing and why it is important. 

A referencing style is a set of rules on how to acknowledge the thoughts, ideas and works of others in a particular way. Different types of sources eg. books, articles, each have a specific format, determined by the referencing style you are using.

Referencing is a crucial part of successful academic writing, avoiding plagiarism and maintaining academic integrity in your assignments and research.

Watch Introduction to referencing (YouTube 3m42s) to learn about the basics of referencing.

Many types of publication examples have been provided in this guide. If you cannot find the example you need, you can:

• consult the [style guide or website]
• view the reference lists of articles in publications that use [relevant style] such [example journals] or consult the Instructions to authors, if writing for a journal
• type the title of the item into Library Search to see if it has a suggested citation
• adapt the rules of a similar publication type to the item
• consult other institutions’ style guides or with your tutor or course coordinator.

This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence, except where otherwise noted.