Chicago-Turabian Citations: Home

Chicago Manual of Style: Turabian 

Learn the Chicago style directly from the authors of the Turabian manual.  The Turabian website provides guidance, formatting, and examples of how to cite within the style. 

Purdue Online Writing Lab: Chicago Style Guide

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides writing resources and instructional materials for writing projects.  The Chicago Style Guide includes an introduction to the style, citation formatting for various sources, formatting for in-text citations and reference lists, and more. 

Chicago Style is most commonly used by those working in literature, history, and the arts.  History majors most commonly use Chicago Style. Turabian is a simpler version of Chicago style meant for students who are writing materials that will not be published. The Turabian guide is shorter and includes information on formatting rules, the basics of researching and writing academic papers, and citation style. 

Always check with your professor to determine which citation style you should use before beginning your paper or project. 

Before you start creating your citations, you will need to identify:

• Who created the source?
• How can you identify the source?
• What is the publication information?
• Where can others find the source? 

Two Citation Styles

There are two styles in which to cite your sources: Notes Style and Author-Date Style.  Always ask your instructor about which style to use before beginning your research. 

Notes Style: In this style, you signal that you have used a source by placing a superscript number at the end of the sentence in which you used the source.  You will then create a note where you will place the full citation.  Notes are placed either at the bottom of the page (footnotes) or at the end of the chapter (endnotes).  You will also list all sources used at the end of the paper in a Bibliography. 

Author-Date Style: In this style, you signal that you have used a source by placing a parenthetical citation (including author, date, and page numbers) next to your reference and within the body of your paper.  Example: (Lepore 2015, 17).  You will also list all sources used at the end of the paper in a Bibliography. 

Rules for the Bibliography or References Page

• Label the first page of your back matter, your comprehensive list of sources, “Bibliography” (for Notes and Bibliography style) or “References” (for Author-Date style).
• Leave two blank lines between “Bibliography” or “References” and your first entry.
• Leave one blank line between remaining entries.
• List entries in letter-by-letter alphabetical order according to the first word in each entry, be that the author's name or the title of the piece..
• Use “and,” not an ampersand, “&,” for multi-author entries.
  • For two to three authors, write out all names.
  • For four to ten authors, write out all names in the bibliography but only the first author’s name plus “et al.” in notes and parenthetical citations.
  • When a source has no identifiable author, cite it by its title, both on the references page and in shortened form (up to four keywords from that title) in parenthetical citations throughout the text.
  • Write out publishers’ names in full.
  • Do not use access dates unless publication dates are unavailable.
  • If you cannot ascertain the publication date of a printed work, use the abbreviation “n.d.”
  • Provide DOIs instead of URLs whenever possible.
  • If no DOI is available, provide a URL.
  • If you cannot name a specific page number when called for, you have other options: section (sec.), equation (eq.), volume (vol.), or note (n.).