Chicago/Turabian (NB): The Bibliography Section

In Chicago NB style, the sources you cite in your paper are listed at the end in the bibliography.

In Chicago/Turabian papers using the Notes and Bibliography (NB) citation system, all the sources you cite throughout the text of your paper are listed together and in full in the bibliography, which comes after the main text of your paper. (If you are using the Author Date citation system, this will be called the References section.)

Formatting the Bibliography

The top of the bibliography page, as the rest of your paper, should still include the page number in the right header. On the first line, the title of the page—“Bibliography”—should appear centered and not italicized or bolded. After the page title, leave two blank lines before your first citation.

Unlike the rest of your paper, this page should not be double-spaced: leave a blank line between each citation, but the citations themselves should not be double-spaced. Your citations should be in alphabetical order by the first word in each citation (usually the author’s last name).

Each citation should be formatted with what is called a hanging indent. This means the first line of each reference should be flush with the left margin (i.e., not indented), but the rest of that reference should be indented one inch from the left margin. Any word-processing program will let you format this automatically so you don’t have to do it by hand. (In Microsoft Word, for example, you simply highlight your citations, click on the small arrow right next to the word “Paragraph” on the home tab, and in the popup box choose “hanging indent” under the “Special” section. Click OK, and you’re done.)

Bibliography: This is an example of a correctly formatted bibliography in Chicago/Turabian NB style.

Constructing a Citation

The first step in building each individual citation is to determine the type of resource you are citing, since in each citation style formatting differs slightly based on source type. Some common types are a book, a chapter from a book, a journal article, an online book or article, an online video, a blog post, and personal communication such as an email or an interview you conducted. (You’ll notice that “website” is not a category by itself. If the information you found is online, you want to determine if you’re looking at an online book, an online article, or some other type of document.) The most important information to have for citing a source will always be the author names, the title, and the publisher information and year of publication.

As an example, let’s look in detail at the process of citing three particular sources in Chicago style: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (i.e., a book by one author), Project Gutenberg’s online text of the same book (i.e., an online book), and an online journal article about the book.

Print Sources

Author Name

You always want to start with the author information. You should present the author information in the following order and format: the author’s last name (capitalized), a comma, the author’s first name (capitalized), the author’s middle initial (if given), and then a period:

• Conrad, Joseph.

Title of Source

Next, you should include the title of the source in title case. For a book or other standalone source, the title is italicized; otherwise it should be enclosed in quotation marks.

• Heart of Darkness.

City of Publication

Next, you want to provide the location of the publisher’s office. The location is generally a city, such as “London” or “New York, NY.”

• London:

Publisher Name

Next, provide the publisher’s name, followed by a comma:

• Everyman’s Library,

Date of Publication

After the publisher information, you provide the year in which the source was published, followed by a period.

• 1993.

All together, then, the citation looks like this:

• Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Everyman’s Library, 1993.

Online Sources

Now let’s take a look at the citation for the online version of the same book, available online through the publisher Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org). Treat the online version of a print book exactly the same as a print book, but with an indication of where you found it online.

• Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Project Gutenberg, 2006. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/219/219-h/219-h.htm.

Journal Articles and Multiple Authors

• NooriBerzenji, Latef S., and Marwan Abdi. “The Image of the Africans in Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart.” Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business 5, no. 4 (2013): 710–726.

Much of this citation will look familiar to you now that you know the basics. Again, we start with the author information. If the source has multiple authors, the citation rules are a little different. The first author will be listed with their surname first (Conrad, Joseph) but subsequent authors will be listed with their first names first (Joseph Conrad). Use the word “and” (not an ampersand,&”) before the last author. Here we have only two authors, but if we had five, the “and” would come before the fifth author’s last name, after the comma following the fourth author’s name.

The date of publication and title are formatted the same. Note that even though Chicago style says that the article title should not be italicized, the book titles within the article title are still italicized.

The new information here begins with citing the journal this article is from. Include the title of the journal in italicized title case (all major words capitalized, as in the title of a book):

• Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business

Then include the journal volume:

• 5

If an issue number is provided in addition to the volume number, as it is here, add a comma after the volume number, the abbreviation “no.”, and the issue number:

• 5, no. 4

Next, list the year of the article’s publication in parentheses, followed by a colon:

• (2013):

Finally, list the page numbers of the article, followed by a period [note that the dash between the first and second numbers is an en-dash (–), NOT a hyphen (-) or em-dash (—)]:

• 710–726.

Multiple Publications by the Same Author

If you are referencing multiple publications by (or group of authors) that were published in the same year, there is a special rule for denoting this. You should first order those articles alphabetically by source title in the bibliography. But then, replace the author’s name in all entries except the first one with an em-dash (—).

• Achenbach, Thomas. “Bibliography of Published Studies Using the ASEBA.” Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment, 2012. http://www.aseba.org/asebabib.html.
• —. “School-Age (Ages 6–18) Assessments.” Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment, 2012. http://www.aseba.org/schoolage.html.

Chicago/Turabian (NB): How to Reference Different Types of Sources

In Chicago/Turabian NB style, there are different formats for citations in your bibliography depending on the type of source you are citing.

Now that you know the different components of a book citation in Chicago/Turabian Notes and Bibliography (NB) style and how the citation should be formatted, you will be able to understand the citation formats for other source types. Here are some example citations for the most common types of resources you will use.

Book by One Author

Doyle, Arthur. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 2010.

Book by Multiple Authors

Two or More Authors

(Write out all author names.)

Dubner, Stephen, and Steven Levitt. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005.

Brown, Theodore, H. Eugene Lemay, Bruce Bursten, Catherine Murphy, Patrick Woodward, and Matthew Stoltzfus. Chemistry: The Central Science. London: Prentice Hall, 2015.

Book with Author and Editor

Lovecraft, Howard Phillips. Tales. Edited by Peter Straub. New York: Library of America, 2005.

Article in a Journal with Continuous Pagination

Rottweiler, Frank, and Jacques Beauchemin. “Detroit and Sarnia: Two foes on the brink of destruction.” Canadian/American Studies Journal 54 (2012): 66–146.

Article in a Journal Paginated Separately

Rottweiler, Frank, and Jacques Beauchemin. “Detroit and Sarnia: Two foes on the brink of destruction.” Canadian/American Studies Journal 54, no. 2 (2012): 66–146.

Article in an Internet-Only Journal

Marlowe, Philip, and Sarah Spade. “Detective Work and the Benefits of Colour Versus Black and White.” Journal of Pointless Research 11, no. 2 (2001): 123–124. Accessed October 31, 2015. http://www.jpr.com/stable/detectiveworkcolour.htm.

Page on a Web Site

Pavlenko, Aneta. “Bilingual Minds, Bilingual Bodies.” Psychology Today. Last modified October 7, 2015. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201510/bilingual-minds-bilingual-bodies.

Page on a Web Site, No Author Identified, No Date

“Bilingual Minds, Bilingual Bodies.” Psychology Today. Accessed October 29, 2015. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201510/bilingual-minds-bilingual-bodies.

Chicago/Turabian (NB): Footnotes and Endnotes

In Chicago/Turabian Notes and Bibliography style, use footnotes or endnotes for citing sources in text.

Footnotes and Endnotes

In your paper, when you quote directly from a source in their words, or when you paraphrase someone else’s idea, you need to tell the reader what that source is so the author gets credit for their words and ideas. One method for doing this is creating a footnote.

A footnote is when you follow a quotation, a paraphrased idea, or a piece of information that otherwise needed to be cited with a superscript number (like this.)¹ Then, at the bottom of the page, you give a brief indication of where you retrieved that information. Fuller information about that source is then contained in the paper’s bibliography. Think of the footnote as telling the reader where to go in your bibliography to find the source, and the bibliography entry as telling the reader where to go in the real world to find the source.

An endnote is exactly like a footnote, except that endnotes appear all together at the end of the paper, while each footnote appears on the bottom of the same page as its superscripted number.

Creating a Footnote

There are two steps to creating a footnote. First, you need to place a number in the text to tell the reader what note to look for; then, you need to create the note itself. As an example, let’s say we are writing a paper about meerkat populations and we write the following sentences:

As of 2009, the meerkat population has increased by 20% in Eastern Botswana. “It’s thrilling,” says renowned biologist Elizabeth Khama, “The animals are truly making a comeback.”

We need to create footnotes to cite our sources.

Numbering

The first step to creating a footnote is place a number next to the statement that needs to be sourced. To do this, place the number at the end of the sentence it refers to, after all punctuation.

As of 2009, the meerkat population has increased by 20% in Eastern Botswana.¹ “It’s thrilling,” says renowned biologist Elizabeth Khama, “The animals are truly making a comeback.”²

Your first footnote of the paper should be numbered 1, your second should be 2, and so on until the end of the paper. If you are writing an exceptionally long paper, such as a doctoral thesis, numbers should restart at the beginning of every chapter.

Creating the Notes

Next, you need to create the note that the number refers to. Every number needs a note. In the note, you will have the author’s name, the title of the work, the publication information, and the page number:

1. Andrew Byrd, “The Resurgence of the Meerkat,” Southern African Ecology 32, no. 2 (2009): 221.

You only need to create a note that contains all of this information once per paper. If you cite this source again later in the paper (say, in your sixth note), you would simply write the author, title, and page number, separated by commas:

6. Byrd, “The Resurgence of the Meerkat,” 256.

Using “Ibid.”

However, if you cite the exact same source more than once in a row, without citing any other sources in between, there is a special shorthand you can use. Chicago NB style has very specific rules for what to do in this situation. If you cite the same source multiple times in a row, simply write “Ibid.” in each note after the first—this means “this source is the same as the source in the previous note”:

1. Andrew Byrd, “The Resurgence of the Meerkat,” Southern African Ecology 32, no. 2 (2009): 221.
2. Ibid.

If you’re citing a different page of the same source, add a comma and the new page number after “Ibid.”:

1. Andrew Byrd, “The Resurgence of the Meerkat,” Southern African Ecology 32, no. 2 (2009): 221.
2. Ibid., 225.

Once you cite a different source, your use of “Ibid.” has to start over—you should not use it again until you have multiple notes in a row that cite the same source.

How to Reference Different Types of Sources in Footnotes

Different source types require different citation information when being cited in footnotes.

Footnotes are the preferred citation method for the Chicago/Turabian Notes and Bibliography citation style. When using footnotes, you create what is essentially a “mini-citation” at the bottom of the page. These footnotes guide the reader to the corresponding entry in your bibliography.

Different types of source require different citation information, but they always follow the form of: author, title, publication information, and then either page number or website URL (all separated by commas). And remember, this information will also be contained, in a slightly different form, in your bibliography.

Book by a Single Author

1. Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: Norton, 1997), 223.

Book by Two to Four Authors

2. Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, Freakonomics (New York: William Morrow, 2005), 101.

Book by Five or More Authors

3. Theodore Brown et al., Chemistry: The Central Science (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2005), 642.

Journal Article

4. Andrew Byrd, “The Resurgence of the Meerkat,” Southern African Ecology 32, no. 1 (2009): 221.

Electronic Journal Article

5. Andrew Byrd, “The Meerkats Have All Gone Away,” African Ecology Online 18, no. 2 (2006): 169, accessed October 31, 2015, http://www.afrecoonline.org/byrd1.htm.

Website with Author and Publication Date

6. Cara Nelson, “The Top Three Movies of All Time,” Best Movies, last modified June 26, 1993, http://www.bestmovies.com/nelsoncara1.htm.

Website with Unknown Author and Publication Date

7. “Some Cool Movies,” Best Movies, accessed October 14, 2015, http://www.bestmovies.com/anonymous.htm.