Skip to Main Content
Notre Dame 5 Star University Logo
University Library Logo

Chicago Notes & Bibliography

What is Chicago Notes & Bibliography?

The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition, Notes and Bibliography (or Chicago Footnotes) is a referencing style commonly used across the Schools of Philosophy & Theology and Arts & Sciences.

Within Arts & Sciences, the style is used in the following disciplines: English Literature, History, and Theatre Studies. It may also be used in Aboriginal Studies, Politics, Social Justice, and Sociology.

Note for postgraduates, researchers, and staff: This guide has been adapted from the official Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed. In order to suit the needs of undergraduates undertaking coursework, some of the examples in this guide do not strictly comply with Chicago rules. Library staff recommend postgraduate students, researchers, and anyone who plans to publish their material online, should consult the Chicago Manual of Style Online via the link below, and to find further instructions and examples.

 

Chicago Manual of Style 18th edition footnotes is now available for download from the Endnote website. Follow this link to the Endnote guide for further instructions.

Chicago 18th: summary of key changes

  • 14.30 Place of publication is now omitted for books
  • 13.20 Page numbers are not required in bibliographies for book chapters
  • 13.78 For works authored by or edited by three to six persons (in previous editions it was two to ten), all names are given in the bibliography.
  • 13.23 Up to six authors are listed in a bibliography entry, if more than six only the first three are listed followed by et. al

See What's New in the 18th Edition for the comprehensive list.

PhD students and researchers still using Chicago 17th can view the guide to the 17th edition here, which includes links to the full Manual of Style.

Overview

Any time you use an idea or quote from another source, it should be acknowledged in a footnote, including the page number the quote or idea was retrieved from, as well as an entry in the bibliography.

The main components of Chicago Notes & Bibliography style are:

  1. First footnote
  2. Subsequent, short form footnotes
  3. Bibliography

See introductory examples and explanations in the box below.

The relevant Chicago Manual of Style chapters are linked across many of the examples and notes throughout this guide so that more information can be located easily in the online manual.

Examples

First footnote

1. Sarah Elaine Eaton, ed., Second Handbook of Academic Integrity (Springer, 2024), 3. 

  • The first time a source is cited in a footnote, all the required publication information is entered.
  • If you are referring to a particular passage in a book or journal, include a page number.
  • Elements are separated by commas.

Subsequent footnotes

Having already provided the full citation, subsequent mentions of a work may be shortened. Subsequent mentions of a work do not need to include the publication details. 

 

First footnote
1. Sarah Elaine Eaton, ed., Second Handbook of Academic Integrity (Springer, 2024), 3. 

Subsequent footnote
3. Eaton, Handbook of Academic Integrity, 5.

[13.35] Short form author names 

  • Only include the surname of the author/s in short form footnotes.
  • You do not need to use abbreviations after the surname such as ed. for editor.  

[13.36] Short form titles 

  • The title may be shortened to contain the key word/s from the main title. Titles of four words or less are rarely shortened

5. Murray Pittock, The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Romanticism (Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 75-76.
7. Pittock, Scottish Romanticism, 78.

[13.37] Successive citations

  • To avoid repetition, the author or title alone may be used in successive citations.

3. Murphy and Roberts, Dialectic of Romanticism: A Critique of Modernism (Continuum, 2004), 143.
4. Murphy and Roberts, 143.
5. Murray Pittock, The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Romanticism (Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 75-76.
6. Murphy and Roberts, Dialectic of Romanticism, 145.
7. Pittock, Scottish Romanticism, 78.

In the text, a superscript number should generally be placed at the end of a sentence, clause, or quotation. The number follows any punctuation mark except for a dash:


Murphy and Roberts claim "the Romantics gave priority to ... literature over technology."¹

The corresponding footnote number appears at the bottom of the same page and should contain the citation to the relevant source, including the page number:


1. Peter Murphy and David Roberts, Dialectic of Romanticism (Continuum, 2005), 79.

Bibliography

The bibliography includes full citation details, similar to the first footnote for all texts cited, as well as other particularly relevant texts that were consulted while researching the paper, but may not have been directly mentioned. Elements are separated by full stops.


Eaton, Sarah Elaine, ed. Second Handbook of Academic Integrity. Springer, 2024.

Basic principles of a bibliography

  • The bibliography should be placed at the end of your assignment and begun on a new page. 
  • It should have the word Bibliography as a heading, centred above your list of citations. 
  • List entries in alphabetical order by first author's surname, or the title if the author is not known.
  • Each entry in a bibliography should begin on a new line.
  • Use your word processor’s indentation feature to assign a hanging indent to each citation.

Quotations and more on footnotes

Short quotations: In general, a short quotation, especially one that is not a full sentence, should be run-in to the surrounding text and enclosed in quotation marks.

 

Murphy and Roberts claim "the Romantics gave priority to ... literature over technology."¹

 

Long quotations: The Chicago Manual of Style doesn't have a strict rule on the formatting of long quotations but generally a hundred words or more, or quoted material of more than one paragraph, can be off set as a block quotation. Block quotations are indented from the left margin, always start a new line, and are not enclosed in quotation marks.

  • [12.9] Run-in and block quotations defined
  • [12.10] Choosing between run-in and block quotations
Several citations in one footnote: [13.31; 13.61] More than one footnote should never appear in the same place; however, a single footnote can contain more than one citation - simply separate them with semicolons.

 

First footnote
4. Sarah Elaine Eaton, ed., Second Handbook of Academic Integrity (Springer, 2024), 3.; Stella Cottrell, The Study Skills Handbook, 4th ed. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 21.

Subsequent footnotes
6. Eaton, Handbook of Academic Integrity, 53.; Cottrell, Study Skills Handbook, 26.

Bibliography
List citations separately, in alphabetical order by author's surname. 

Secondary references: [14.160] To cite a source from a secondary source you have not read is generally to be discouraged. If an original source is unavailable, however, both the original and the secondary source must be listed in the footnotes. The bibliography entry should list the source you actually read.
The example below is a journal article (by Zukofsky) quoted in a book (by Costello). Adjust this example according to the sources you are referring to.

 

First footnote
9. Louis Zukofsky, “Sincerity and Objectification,” Poetry 37 (February 1931): 269, quoted in Bonnie Costello, Marianne Moore: Imaginary Possessions (Harvard University Press, 1981), 78.

Subsequent footnotes
21. Zukofsky, "Sincerity and Objectification," 269, quoted in Costello, Marianne Moore, 78.

Bibliography

Costello, Bonnie. Marianne Moore: Imaginary Possessions. Harvard University Press, 1981.

Italics versus quotation marks for titles [8.168]

The use of italics or quotation marks for titles in the body of your text depends on the type of work you are referring to and follows the same rule that applies for footnotes/bibliography, i.e. italics for the larger/parent work (e.g. book or journal) and quotation marks for smaller works (e.g. book chapters, journal articles, newspaper articles etc).

Tutorial, tools, guides, and classes

Online

Print copy

For more bibliography entry examples, see the Chicago quick referencing guides.

The University Library provides students with free access to EndNote and RefWorks software.

Both have the same purpose: to make the management and formatting of references more streamlined. It is worth looking at both tools to determine which one could be right for you, depending on how you like to work.

The Library recommends that undergraduate and coursework students use RefWorks, and higher degree by research students and academic staff use EndNote.

  • RefWorks is a fully cloud-based tool, meaning that there is no requirement to install or upgrade the software and users have access to the full features of the software online.
  • EndNote requires installation on one of your devices in order for you to access the full features of the software.

Read more about the difference between EndNote and RefWorks.

Find & Search
Visit the Library
Contact the Library
University Quicklinks

Copyright © 2024 The University of Notre Dame Australia | CRICOS Provider Code: 01032F | TEQSA PRV12170 | RTO Code 0064