Chicago 18th edition notes and bibliography

The Chicago Manual of Style allows for two different types of reference styles. There is the Notes and Bibliography Style (the subject of this guide), and the Author-Date System (a variation of the Harvard style).

While the Notes & Bibliography Style allows for either footnotes or endnotes, this guide will deal with footnotes. Bibliographic citations are provided in footnotes, supplemented by a bibliography at the end of the document. Your footnotes and bibliography should identify references cited (eg. book, journal article, webpage, video) in sufficient detail so that others may locate and consult your references. Each note corresponds to a raised (superscript) number in the text.

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

A note may look like this:

1. Alastair Blanshard, Hercules: A Heroic Life (Granta, 2006), 151.

While a bibliographic entry may look like this:

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

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.

For instructions on inserting a footnote in Word, see Insert footnotes with EndNote on About output styles.

• 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
• Required elements of a citation that have been mentioned in the text can often be omitted from a footnote but not usually from an endnote
• 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
• Information about a presentation is no longer enclosed in parentheses in a note.

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.