Cite Sources

There are a couple of ways you can handle in-text citations in Chicago format: the author-date system or the notes-and-bibliography system. Author-date is generally used in the sciences, and notes-and-bibliography is generally used in the humanities. Be sure to ask your instructor whether one style is preferred over another for your assignment.

In the author-date system, items in your text are cited with this basic format:

(Author and year, page #)

It has been argued that In the Lake of the Woods provides an instance of the novel "questioning the act of storytelling itself" (Cohen 2009, 123).

If you cite the author in your sentence itself, you can leave the author's name out of your parenthetical citation:

As Samuel S. Cohen notes, In the Lake of the Woods "is structured in an extraordinarily self-negating way" (2009, 126). [note: in this example, the parenthetical citation could also have followed Cohen's name.]

Specific instructions for this system are listed in the boxes below. 

In the notes-and-bibliography system, you'll include one citation in a footnote or endnote, and one in your bibliography at the end. Use ^{superscript numbers} in-text to indicate that a reference can be found in a footnote or endnote. See the rest of this guide for advice on how to handle citations in footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographies. 

Specific instructions for the two formatting styles are in the tabbed pages of this section.

Make a template and format it for your preferred formatting style.  

For Microsoft Word:

• Choose References at the top, then choose Chicago.
• For Author-Date style, use the Insert Citation option on the right.
• For Notes-Bibliography, use the Insert Footnote option on the left.

For Google Docs:

• Choose Templates Gallery.
• Choose Education.
• Look at the Reports options. For now, only MLA and APA styles are options.