Scope: These are simplified student examples, not a full Chicago Manual of Style replacement. Confirm edition (17th/18th) and notes vs author-date with your instructor.
Two Chicago systems
- Notes and bibliography — footnotes or endnotes in the text, plus a bibliography. Common in history and the humanities.
- Author-date — parenthetical (Author Year) citations and a reference list. Closer to APA rhythm; used in some social sciences.
How to draft a Chicago note on paper
- Collect author, title, place, publisher, year, and page for the passage you cite.
- Write a first full note the first time you cite the source; shorten later notes.
- Build a hanging-indent bibliography entry for the same source (author surname first).
- Proofread punctuation, italics for book titles, and quotation marks for article titles.
Sample footnote (book, first note)
1. Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 42.
Sample shortened note
2. Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, 55.
Sample bibliography line
Ahmed, Sara. Living a Feminist Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.
Journal article (bibliography)
Lopez, Rina M., and Kavita Patel. “Classroom Citation Fluency.” Journal of Writing Research 13, no. 2 (2021): 201–24. https://doi.org/10.1000/example.
Using Citation Pack alongside Chicago
Store author, title, year, publisher, DOI, and URL in the builder under APA or US Works Cited as a working draft, then rewrite punctuation into Chicago notes for your paper. For parenthetical patterns in other styles, see in-text citation. For list formatting practice, see annotated bibliography.