Citation Libguide- Chicago

Citing or documenting the sources used in your research serves three purposes:

• gives proper credit to the authors of the words and ideas that you incorporated into your work.

• allows those who are reading your work to locate your sources, in order to learn more about the ideas that you include in your paper and verify your research.

• citing your sources consistently and accurately helps you avoid plagiarism in your writing.

Resources 

• Label the first page of your back matter, your comprehensive list of sources, Bibliography.

• Each bibliography entry should be single spaced.

• 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.

Missing Information

If there is no author given, your citation will start with the title of the work. You must put these citations in correct alphabetical order in your Bibliography.

When putting works in alphabetical order, ignore initial articles such as "the", "a", or "an". For example the title The Best of Canada would be alphabetized as if it started with the word Best instead of the word The.

If the title begins with a number, alphabetize it as if the number was spelled out. For example the title 5 Ways to Succeed in Business would be alphabetized under F as if it had started with the word Five .

For example, this is how the following titles would be alphabetized:

Anthropology in Action [A]

The Best of Canada [B... ignore "The"]

Easy Plant Care [E]

5 Ways to Succeed in Business [F... 5=Five]

A Special Kind of Madness [S... ignore "A"]

No Author

If no author or creator is provided, start the citation with the title of the work you are citing instead. Remember that an author/creator won't necessarily be a person's name. It may be an organization or corporation, for example Health Canada or a username on a site such as YouTube.

No Date

Print Materials: if no publication date is provided, use the initials n.d. where you would normally put the date.

Online materials: if no copyright or modification date is provided, use the date that you accessed the material (e.g. accessed June 12, 2020).

No Place of Publication

If there is no place of publication given, use the initials n.p. where you would normally put the place of publication.

In-Text Citations

Citing in the Text

The Chicago style, when referring to a source of information within the text of a document, in its simplest form, gives a short citation consisting of the name of the author (or authors) and the date of publication.

• The short references within the text are given wholly or partly in round brackets.

• Use only the surname of the author followed by the year of publication. Include page, chapter, section or paragraph numbers if you need to be specific. A comma is placed between the year of publication and the page, chapter, section or paragraph numbers.

• No distinction is made between books, journal articles, internet documents or other formats except for electronic documents that do not provide page numbers. In this instance, use the paragraph number, if available, with the abbreviation para.

• Citations in the text can either be placed at the end of a sentence in parentheses (brackets) or alternatively, the author's name may be included in the text, and just the date and additional information placed within the brackets.

Some Examples

• A citation for a book appearing in the text as:

There are many reasons for intestinal scarring (Ogilvie 1998, 26-28).

would be found in the reference list in the following form:

Ogilvie, Timothy H. 1998. Large Animal Internal Medicine. Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins.

• A citation for a journal article appearing in the text as either:

... gastrointestinal illness is also often misdiagnosed (Morgan and Thompson 1998, 243).

OR

Morgan and Thompson (1998, 243) argue that gastrointestinal illness is also often misdiagnosed.

would be referenced as:

Morgan, U. M., and R.C. A. Thompson. 1998. "PCR Detection of Cryptosporidium: The Way Forward." Parasitology Today 14, no. 6 (December): 241-245.

• An electronic document would be cited in the text in the same way as a print document.

For example, citation for an internet document appearing in the text as:

There are many useful materials available (Raidal and Dunsmore 1996, par. 13)

would be given in the reference list as:

Raidal, Shane R., and Jon Dunsmore. 1996. Parasites of Companion Birds: A Survey of Alimentary Tract Parasites in Caged Psittacine Birds with Specific Reference to the Prevalence of Trichomonas Gallinae. http://wwwvet.murdoch.edu.au/caf/parasit.htm.

Note: When referring to multiple authors within the text and within parentheses, precede the final name with the word and:

... as Kurtines and Szapocnik (2003) demonstrated.

... as has been demonstrated (Kurtines and Szapocnik, 2003).

Keep the following formatting rules in mind:

• The first note will be written in full; subsequent notes of the same source are abbreviated. 

• If you have notes from the same sourced one after another, use "Ibid." instead of repeating the detailed information. For example:

  • 5. Smith, Happy Songs, 41.

  • 6. Ibid., 45-9.

  • 7. Ibid.

  • 8. Lewis, "Pea Soup," 75.

  • 9. Ibid., 77.

  • 10. Smith, Happy Songs, 49.

Videos

Annotated Bibliography

Annotations can be merely descriptive, summarizing the authors' qualifications, research methods, and arguments. 

Annotations can evaluate the quality of scholarship in a book or article.  You might want to consider the logic of authors' arguments, and the quality of their evidence.  Your findings can be positive, negative, or mixed.

Annotations explain why the source is relevant to your assignment. 

Rules! rules! rules!

The Chicago Manual of Style states the following formatting rules.  

• The text should be double-spaced.

• Numbering starts on the first page of writing (not the title page), at the top right of the page.

• Reference list entries must have a hanging indent 

• There should be 1 inch (2.54 cm) margins all around (top, bottom, left, and right) on each page.

• Use Times Roman font, or a similar serif font.

• Each paragraph should be indented using the tab key.