Examples of Chicago Manual of Style Citation

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Updated August 4, 2021
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The Chicago Manual of Style provides comprehensive guidance for citing books, articles, and various additional materials in the bibliography, reference lists, and notes of a paper or manuscript. Specific provisions are made for citing electronic media to account for the creation of published material available on the internet. While individual citations for different types of sources will vary slightly in format, they all contain some very similar information.

Chicago Styles

There are two styles commonly used within Chicago style. The first is the author-date style. As the name suggests, the two elements within a reference list citation are the author and the date of publication.

The notes-bibliography style, as described in this article, consists of numbered notes within the text. These numbers refer to notes placed either at the bottom of each page (footnotes) or at the end of the chapter or book (endnotes). The full citation sources are arranged in a bibliography.

Chicago Manual of Style: Citation Examples

Citation content for books, articles and additional materials require certain common information when using The Chicago Manual of Style:

  • author (or editor or compiler)
  • title and usually the subtitle
  • the date of publication

Books will include the publisher and place of publication while articles from journals will give the journal name, volume and issue number, and the page numbers of the article.

Notes will be numbered while bibliography and reference lists are not numbered, but rather, presented in alphabetical order.

Online works will also include retrieval information, including the URL and the date of access.

If a given work cited in the bibliography or reference list be excessively long due to title or subtitle, there are provisions for making the complete citation in the reference list and then using an abbreviated form in the notes list to avoid excessive documentation.

The Chicago Manual of Style should be consulted for the complete list of formatting guidelines.

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Common Citation Format

The following examples show how to cite a work of fiction in book and journal article format according to The Chicago Manual of Style:

  • Book: Author’s Last Name, Author’s First Name. Title of Book: Subtitle of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher’s Name, Date of Publication.
  • Article: Author’s Last Name, Author’s First Name. “Title of Article: Subtitle of Article.” Title of Journal Volume Number, Issue Number (Date of Publication): YY-YY.

Barnes, Steven and Larry Niven. Dream Park. New York: Ace Books, 1981.

Christopher, Darlene. "A Harder Focus on the Global Classroom." Training + Development. (February 2011): 30-31.

Flynn, Vince. The Third Option. New York: Pocket Books, 2000.

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Note Citation Format

When citing works for a Notes section, the citation is similar to that of a bibliographic entry but there are some differences. Follow this format to create a Notes entry:

  • Author’s First and Last Names, Title of Book: Subtitle of Book (Place of Publication: Publisher’s Name, Date of Publication), pp.

Here is a Notes entry taken from the first bibliographic example above:

  1. Vince Flynn, The Third Option (New York: Pocket Books, 2000), pp. 20-21.

Note entries are numbered for reference in the main body of work. The author’s first name is given first rather than the last name, as seen in the bibliographic entry. The inclusion of publishing city, publisher and year of publication remain the same.

Cite newspaper articles as a note entry only. You don’t need to include it in the bibliography unless you use it frequently or it’s a critical research source.

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Citing Online Sources

With the advent of the internet and other online sources of information, it is often necessary to provide citation information from those sources.

Inclusion of the web address is necessary to allow finding the exact location from which the citation originates. Include https:// in the web address. If using a DOI, append https://doi to the entry. You do not have to include the date accessed.

Here is a sample Notes entry for an online newspaper article:

  1. Alan Smith, “Red or Green", New Mexico News, October 23, 2012. http://www.newsfromhere.com.

Here is an example of a bibliographic online citation:

Weston, Liz Pulliam. "My Best Financial Advice". Consumerist.com, August 2, 2007. http://consumerist.com/2007/08/my-best-financial-advice-liz-pulliam-weston.html

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Other Sources for Citation Information

These citation examples are just a small sampling of the various types of citations covered by The Chicago Manual of Style. More specific guidelines for citation types can be found at the Chicago Manual of Style website as well as other websites including:

These online references can cover the full breadth of the requirements for Chicago/Turabian style citations.