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This section deals specifically with referencing using the Chicago Manual of Style. For general formatting information, see the Guidelines for Written Assignments on this site.
Why provide references?
Why provide references?
Obviously, there is the stick of the academic world: failure to provide references leads to being punished for plagiarism. But why does this matter? After all, information is available everywhere, isn't it?
Not all information is equal. Also, whereas in resolving mathematical equations, it is necessary to "show one's work", in the humanities, one "shows one's work" by giving clues about how one went about arriving at the conclusions that figure in an assignment. And this matters, because it shows both the breath and depth of one's research. It also shows that one can find and use good and relevant sources.
So when doing research, it is very important to document one's process (keep notes of what information was found where). History is not only about fact-finding (knowing exactly what happened at a given time), but also about exploring various other researchers' interpretations of how, why, and what consequences derived of something happening in the past. Obviously, we as researchers were not there, and therefore we must rely on traces left by people who were directly involved (called primary sources) and on the interpretations of other researchers who have explored these events and can provide context, background information, and their own interpretations to nourish our thinking about historical events. These works of researchers who were not directly involved, but who have studied primary documents are called secondary sources. Both types of sources are essential to good historical research. See the page on the research process on this website for more detail on how to use these sources appropriately and for tips on how to determine which are "good" sources.
Good references start with good note-taking.
Good references start with good note-taking.
When researching, take notes on anything that you may find possibly useful. I like to keep a research journal that documents where I found what information and also comments on the quality of the various sources. Chances are not all the information will find its way in the final paper, but it is easier to write a paper from an overabundance of information than to have to go back to the library the day before a paper is due because there is not information to make a good essay.
Take careful note of the following and ensure that it corresponds to the content notes:
Name of the author (not just initials)
Title of the article (if it comes from a journal)
Title of the journal, book or title of website or other source of information
Date it was published
Page number (if it is a print source) or date when the website was accessed (as updates to websites can change information)
What information needs to be referenced?
What information needs to be referenced?
In footnotes:
Any direct quote (were the text from a source is presented textually, either in quotation marks or as a block quote (over 4 lines of text)).
Any specific factual information that comes from a source but is not general knowledge for someone taking the course for which the paper is being written. For example, the date of the beginning of World War I (1914) would not need to be given reference in a paper.
Any information presented in an assignment that reflects a specific scholar or set of scholars' point of view on an issue. In other words, anything having to do with historical interpretation that has been derived from reading a secondary source needs a reference.
In a bibliography:
List all of the works that significantly contributed to the research process (this would normally not include language dictionaries or general knowledge encyclopaedias, for example, unless a very specific quote was drawn from these sources).
Any work that was cited in the body of the paper (and therefore in a footnote) must be present in the bibliography.
History courses use what is known as the Chicago - Humanities system (also known as Chicago-Turabian):
History courses use what is known as the Chicago - Humanities system (also known as Chicago-Turabian):
Footnotes are required for referencing sources, not parenthetical or in-text references.
There is one exception to the footnotes-only rule: when writing a book review, references to the book being reviewed (and only those) should be provided by simply indicating the page number in the book being reviewed where the information came from in parentheses in the text, All references to other works used in the review must still be provided in footnotes.
Footnotes (at the bottom of the page) are preferred to endnotes (at the end of the paper), especially for in-line grading of digitally-submitted papers (to avoid endless scrolling).
Footnotes should be single-spaced. Do not skip a line between footnotes. Your word processer has this as a default setting; don't change it.
All footnotes for documents that have page numbers must include the exact page number(s) where the information is found, not the page range of the entire document.
Authors' names in footnotes are presented in the normal order (first name and surname) whereas they are reversed (surname, first name) in the bibliography for alphabetisation purposes.
There should be no "works cited" list. Only a list titled "Bibliography" or "References".
Unless it starts near the bottom of the page, there is no need to start a new page for the bibliography.
Entries in the bibliography must be presented in alphabetical order of author’s last name and not subdivided into categories or according to types of sources.
If there is no identified author, alphabetise according to the first significant word in the title (omitting words such as "A" or "The").
Entries in a bibliography must never be numbered.
Contrary to what you will read in the CMS, bibliographical entries should be single-spaced, skipping one line between each entry (double-spacing is only useful when sending manuscripts to publishers).
Whether it be in bibliographical entries, in footnotes, or in the body of the text, the titles of books, journals, newspapers, and websites are always italicised. Similarly, the titles of articles, chapters in a book, or specific pages on a website must but be set between "quotation marks", but not italicised. If there are quotation marks in the title of an article, they become 'single quotes' within the "double quotation marks" that frame the title of the article.
All Important Words in Titles Are to Be Capitalised.
Never use boldface or ALL CAPS in references. Surnames of authors may be set in Small Caps in bibliographies, but that is not required.
The date of publication, in the Chicago Humanities style, is always at the end of the reference, not after the name of the author.
A URL (the web address starting with http:// at the top of your browser) is never good enough for a bibliography. Descriptive information is required. In fact, unless you are referencing an actual website, URLs can be omitted for sources such as articles found in a database accessible online, such as JSTOR or America, History and Life, for example.
As much as possible, use the "hanging indent" feature to format entries in a bibliography. In no case should they be indented like a paragraph of text. The video to the right demonstrates how to make a hanging indent using MS Word. Please note that it uses the example of an MLA formatted paper, which means the specific formatting of the bibliographical entries is not quite the same as in the Chicago Manual of Style, so this should not be used as a guideline to formatting the contents of the bibliographical entries. Please refer to the guidelines above. Maximise the YouTube window so you can clearly see the process.
References on the Chicago Manual of Style:
References on the Chicago Manual of Style:
If you have trouble downloading the PDF document above, it can be accessed (in possibly updated versions) at the Augustana Citation Guides website
This website is the copyrighted work of Stéphane-D. Perreault and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Materials from external sources are acknowledged as such and used with permission. Use or adaptation of the material on this website without author's permission and attribution constitutes a violation of this license. Commercial use prohibited.
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