Skip to Main Content

Chicago Style Guide: Home

A guide to using Chicago (17th ed.) style in writing research papers

Chicago Style Guide

CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE, 17th ED. (AUTHOR DATE FORMAT)

Note that Chicago Style has two formats: Notes Bibliography for humanities, and Author Date for the sciences and social sciences.  Butte College instructors tend to favor the Author Date format; thus this guide is only for Author Date.  The Purdue OWL website has instructions mainly for NB. You may wish to check with your instructor if you are not sure which format you should use.  For more information, consult the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. available at the library at Z253 .U69 2017, or online at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html See a sample Author Date paper at https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/10/

In the Author Date system, sources are briefly cited parenthetically in the text, by author’s last name and year of publication. Each in-text citation matches up with an entry in a reference list, where full bibliographic information is provided.

Using APA Style

Most of the time, you won't have to write your own citations.  This video shows you how to get them from databases and the library catalog:

 

Basic guidelines

REFERENCES


The reference list is titled simply “References.”  Entries are alphabetical by author and have hanging indents, double-spaced between each title.  If there is more than one title by the same author on the reference list, insert a 3-em dash (———) instead of repeating the name after the first entry.  Here are a few examples and guidelines; fuller information is found in the more detailed tabs.

Use this basic format:  Author. Date. "Title of article." Title of publication, page numbers.  Location: Publisher.

  • For a book with one author:

Smith, Zadie. 2016. Swing Time. New York: Penguin Press.

  • A book with multiple authors will list all names in full, with ‘and’ at the end (no ampersand)

Grazer, Brian, and Charles Fishman. 2015. A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

  • For an ebook, include a URL or the name of the database in the reference list entry. For other types of e-books, name the format. If no page numbers are available, cite a section title or a chapter, if any:

Robinson, Barry. 2016. The Mark of Rebels:  Indios Fronterizos and Mexican Independence, 122-25. Tuscaloosa: University Alabama Press, 2016. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed January 23, 2018).

  • If a book has an author AND an editor or translator, put the editor’s/translator’s name after the book title.  Do not abbreviate Edited or Translated:

Hugo, Victor. 2002. The Toilers of the Sea. Translated by James Hogarth. New York: Modern Library.

  • For a chapter in a book or ebook (such as a collection of essays), include the chapter author, the title of the piece in quotation marks, and the editor.  Put In before the title of the book:

Gould, Glenn, 1984.  “Streisand as Schwarzkopf.”  The Glenn Gould Reader, edited by Tim Page, 308-11.  New York: Vintage Books.

  • For journal articles:

Satterfield, Susan. 2016. “Livy and the Pax Deum.” Classical Philology 111, no. 2 (April): 165–76.

  • For journal articles consulted online, include a URL or the name of the database in the reference list entry:

Keighren, Innes M. 2017. "History and philosophy of geography I: The slow, the turbulent, and the dissenting." Progress In Human Geography 41, no. 5: 638-647. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed January 23, 2018).

  • For websites, if no publishing date is given on the webpage put n. d. for no date and give the date of access.

Bouman, Katie. 2016. “How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole.” Filmed November 2016 at TEDxBeaconStreet, Brookline, MA. Video, 12:51. https://www.ted.com/talks/katie_bouman_what_does_a_black_hole_look_like .

Stamper, Kory. 2017. "From 'F-Bomb' to ';Photobomb': How the Dictionary Keeps Up with English." Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air, NPR, April 19, 2017. Audio, 35:25. http://www.npr.org/2017/04/19/524618639/from-f-bomb-to-photobomb-how-the-dictionary-keeps-up-with-english.

Some examples taken from the Chicago Manual of Style online tutorial.

Librarian

Profile Photo
Jean Ping

Chicago Style Handbook

Find more help

The Chicago Manual of Style Online has helpful sample citations.

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) mostly only covers the NB format that Butte College instructors do not tend to use.  But it still has some helpful Author Date format tools:

Want to try a new, free software tool to build your bibliography?  MyBib is the best tool we've seen for building and keeping a list of citations.  It's easy to use and lets you switch between several styles.  Try it out at https://www.mybib.com/

Need Help?