Chicago Citation Generator

Chicago style, the short version

Chicago style comes from The Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition, University of Chicago Press). History, art history, philosophy and many publishers use its notes-and-bibliography system.

Notes and bibliography

Put a superscript number in your text. The matching footnote gives the full citation the first time, and a short note (author, short title, page) after that. The bibliography at the end lists every source alphabetically.

Names in notes versus bibliography

Notes use normal order, Toni Morrison. The bibliography inverts the first author only, Morrison, Toni. Separate the parts with commas in notes and full stops in the bibliography.

Publication facts

Books need the place, publisher and year: New York: Knopf, 1987. Journal articles give volume, issue and year: 45, no. 2 (2019): 101–23.

Headline-style capitalisation

Capitalise the major words of every title. Italicise books and journals; put articles, chapters and web pages in quotation marks.

Ibid. is optional

The 17th edition prefers a short note to “Ibid.” for repeated citations, although “Ibid.” is still allowed for a note that cites the same source as the one right before it.

In-text citations

Chicago notes-and-bibliography uses numbered footnotes rather than parenthetical citations. The generator gives the full note for the first citation and a short note for every later one.