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In literature, fine arts, and related fields, the Chicago Manual of Style is highly popular. This style guide covers a wide range of texts: not just journal articles but also monographs, essays, book chapters, and books. This article will help you understand the nuances of Chicago style, especially Chicago citation style.
What is Chicago citation style?
There’s no single citation style according to the Chicago Manual of Style! If your target journal, publisher, or institution requires you to follow Chicago citation style, you’ve got two options:
1. Author-date
2. Notes-bibliography
Which you choose depends on your field as well as the guidelines you’ve been given. In case those guidelines don’t specify, look for sample papers to help you decide.
Author-date citations in Chicago style
If you are familiar with APA style, you probably understand the author-date citations system. When you cite a source in the text, you give the last names of the author(s) and the year of publication. If there are more than 3 authors, you list only the first in the text and then use “et al.”
Example of Chicago in-text citation in author-date style:
The fall in global oil prices turned Graciosaland, once an economically and politically stable regional power, into a country with “widespread unrest, inflation, and shortages of essential goods” (Suvarnarajan and Tatsunima, 2023, 9-10).
Rahimi et al. (2023) found a strong relationship between teachers’ gender perceptions and student sexual harassment in school.
Chicago citation style 2: Notes and bibliography
In-text citations consist of superscript numbers with a footnote or endnote. You then have a bibliography at the end of the work.
The advantage of this system is that it works in fields where a lot of your sources aren’t conventional journal articles or books. For example, pictures, music compositions, or even web series.
The footnote or endnote contains brief details of the work you’re citing. You can also use “ibid.” or “op cit.” for brevity.
Whether you use footnotes or endnotes may depend on the length of the text you’re writing. If it’s a short essay, endnotes are fine. If it’s a full-length book, it’s going to be tedious for readers to keep navigating between the endnotes and the main text; it makes sense to use footnotes instead even if they take up a lot of space on the page.
See also: Footnotes and Endnotes in Chicago Style: A Handy Guide
Example of Chicago in-text citation in the notes-bibliography style:
The year 1850 saw the climax in a social crusade against the female nude in any form of art.3
Note
3. Peter Natarajan and Charles Suwannathat, Victorian Morality: How to Cook a Raccoon and Dance with an Ostrich (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 95.
At subsequent citations of this work, you can use a shortened note, like this:
Natarajan and Suwannathat, Victorian Morality, 123.
Formatting a Chicago in-text citation with missing information
If there’s missing information for a citation in the notes and bibliography system, it’s pretty easy to handle: you just provide whatever information you have available. It’s trickier when you’re following the author-date system.
Chicago in-text citation with no date: Use “n.d.” in the text, for example,
The institution has strong policies against bullying (Saskawinga University, n.d.).
Chicago in-text citation with no author: Use the title (or abbreviated title) and the year of publication, for example,
Narratives were commonly used in teaching statecraft and building political consciousness (Panchatantra, 1199).
