Chicago Manual of Style uses two documentation styles:
- Notes-Bibliography System: used for literature, history, and the arts
- Author-Date System: used for the social sciences
If you are unsure which one to use, be sure to ask your instructor!
Notes-Bibliography
- Include an endnote or a footnote each time you use a source, regardless how you refer to it (direct quote, summary, or paraphrase)
- Footnotes: If you use footnotes, include them in numbered order at the bottom of the page where the reference was made.
- Endnotes: If you use endnotes, organize them in a numbered list Notes page at the end of your paper before the bibliography.
- Both footnotes and endnotes start with the appropriate number followed by a period and then a space before the text of the reference.
- In your writing, use a superscript number at the end of the sentence that refers your reader to the corresponding footnote or endnote.
- The first time you use a note, include all relevant information about the source: author's full name, source title, and facts of the publication (publication name, date, page numbers).
- For subsequent notes that refer to the same source, only include the author's last name, a shortened form of the title, and page numbers.
Example Note (Book)
(number of note) First Name Last Name, Title of Source (Publisher location: Name of Publisher, date), page number-page number.
1. Zadie Smith, Swing Time (New York: Penguin Press, 2016), 315–16.
2. Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 12.
Shortened Note
3. Smith, Swing Time, 320.
4. Grazer and Fishman, Curious Mind, 37.
