Chicago: The Basics

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Tip: Check out this sample paper to find out what an essay in the Chicago Style looks like.

The examples found in this section are based on the style guide The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed., 2017.

General formatting

The Chicago citation style primarily uses notes. There are two types: footnotes and endnotes. They share the same formatting. Here at Champlain, we mostly use footnotes.

  • The text in the paper will have a superscript number at the end of the cited material (like this: ¹).
  • This number refers to a note with the corresponding number found either at the bottom of the page (in the case of footnotes) or at the end of the paper (endnotes).
  • Indent the first line of the footnote. Leave a blank line between entries.

Tip: Inserting footnotes in a Microsoft Word document is easy: follow these instructions to find out how.

A bibliography may be required and comes at the end of the document. The bibliography regroups in one place all the sources that were cited throughout the paper, with different formatting.

  • The entries are in alphabetical order by author (or by title if there is no author).
  • If your bibliography entry is longer than one line, indent the second and subsequent lines. Leave a blank line between entries.

Examples

Text

Anthropological research has provided “ecologically insightful accounts of native views of the natural world.”¹³

Note

13. Peter Knudson and David Suzuki, Wisdom of the Elders (Toronto: Stoddart, 1992), 23.

Bibliography

Knudson, Peter and David Suzuki. Wisdom of the Elders. Toronto: Stoddart, 1992.

Two or more notes from the same source

  • Use the short form of a note when citing a work that you’ve already cited once. The short form only contains the author’s last name, the abbreviated title and page number.
  • When citing a work you’ve already cited several times in a row, only include the title in the short form citation the first time (see notes 4 and 5 below).
  • Always keep the title when your paper includes footnotes referring to multiple works by the same author (see notes 6 and 7 below).
  • Note 6 and 7 are the short form of the source cited in note 1. Note 5 is the short form for the source cited in note 2.

Examples

1. Howard C. Anawalt, Idea Rights: A Guide to Intellectual Property (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 103.

2. Peter Knudson and David Suzuki, Wisdom of the Elders (Toronto: Stoddart, 1992), 75-6.

3. Howard C. Anawalt, “The Habit of Success,” Nova Law Review 10, no. 3 (1986): 2.

4. Knudson and Suzuki, Wisdom of the Elders, 23.

5. Knudson and Suzuki, 36-40.

6. Anawalt, Idea Rights, 65.

7. Anawalt, Idea Rights, 66-67.

Citing an indirect source (also called secondary source) is what happens when you’re using a quote you found in a text by a different author.

  • Chicago style encourages finding the original source of the quote and consulting that instead. Use the following format in scenarios where this is not possible.
  • Both in the footnote and the bibliography, include information on the original source of the quote, then about the document where you found it.
  • Introduce the source you found the excerpt in with the phrase “Quoted in”.
  • In the example below, the person writing the essay read an article by Alexia Morgan in which she quotes Ramon Bonfil, and they wanted to use the quote by Ramon Bonfil.

Footnotes

1. Ramon Bonfil, “World Bycatches of Sharks in High-Seas Fisheries: Appraising the Waste of a Resource,” FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 341 (1994):42, quoted in Alexia Morgan, “Sharks: The State of the Science,” Ocean Science Series (May 2010):1, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263441572_Sharks-the_state_of_the_science.

Bibliography

Bonfil, Ramon. “World Bycatches of Sharks in High-Seas Fisheries: Appraising the Waste of a Resource.” FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 341 (1994):42. Quoted in Morgan, Alexia. “Sharks: The State of the Science.” Ocean Science Series (May 2010):1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263441572_Sharks-the_state_of_the_science.