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Citations Guide: Chicago

Citation management systems that can store all your research as well as put all your references into proper format. Also covers the most popular style manuals.

Chicago Style - Quick Start

In a hurry? Try this Quick Guide page from the Chicago Manual of Style website. Gives plenty of examples for both notes and bibliographies for the most commonly cited forms of research sources.

Quick Start Chicago Style

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Chicago Style Citations

The Chicago Manual of Style presents two basic documentation systems: (1) notes and bibliography and (2) author-date. Choosing between the two often depends on subject matter and the nature of sources cited, as each system is favored by different groups of scholars.

The notes and bibliography style is preferred by many in the humanities, including those in literature, history, and the arts. This style presents bibliographic information in notes and, often, a bibliography. It accommodates a variety of sources, including esoteric ones less appropriate to the author-date system.

The author-date system has long been used by those in the physical, natural, and social sciences. In this system, sources are briefly cited in the text, usually in parentheses, by author’s last name and date of publication. The short citations are amplified in a list of references, where full bibliographic information is provided.

Aside from the use of notes versus parenthetical references in the text, the two systems share a similar style.

Online Examples of Chicago Style

Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) - Chicago Manual of Style. WSU Writing Center uses the OWL site for all citation styles.

UWM Online Writing Center - from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The Chicago, or Turabian style, sometimes called documentary note or humanities style, places bibliographic citations at the bottom of a page or at the end of a paper. Check with the instructor who assigned your paper to determine whether you need to use notes or whether you can cite sources parenthetically in the body of your paper with a reference list at the end. These pages explain the Chicago/Turabian NOTE system.