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Citation Styles

A comprehensive guide to citing in various citation styles, offering examples of citations as well as links to outside sources.

What is a citation?

A citation or reference is the information given in a bibliography or a database about a particular title, which often includes:

  • article title or chapter title
  • periodical title or book title
  • author(s) or editor(s)
  • place of publication
  • date of publication
  • publisher name
  • volume/issue (articles) or edition (books)
  • page range
  • medium of publication
  • electronic access (URL or DOI)
  • date accessed

Citations give credit to those whose ideas have contributed to your research and give your readers enough information to locate the sources you used. There are many ways to format citations. The style you choose depends on your field and the requirements set by your professor or publisher.

End-of-Text References (CMOS 17th ed.)

Template

Author Last Name, Author First Name. Year of Publication. "Title of Article." Title of Journal Volume, no. Issue (Month of Publication): Page range. DOI, URL, or Database.

Examples

Print article

Ellery, Karen. 2008. "Undergraduate Plagiarism: A Pedagogical Perspective." Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 33, no. 5 (October): 507.

Online Article

Mozgovoy, Maxin, Tuomo Kakkonen, and Georgina Cosma. 2010 "Automatic Student Plagiarism Detection: Future Perspectives." Journal of Educational Computing Research 43, no. 4 (January): 511-31. doi:10.2190/EC.43.4.e.

Template

Book

Author Last Name, First Name. Year of Publication. Book Title. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Chapter in an edited book

Author Last Name, First Name. Year of Publication. "Chapter Title." In Book Title, edited by Editor(s), Page Range. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Examples

One author

Pollock, Dale. 1983. Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas. New York: Harmony Books.

Multiple authors

Lott, Bernice, and Heather E. Bullock. 2007. Psychology and Economic Injustice: Personal, Professional, and Political Intersections. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Chapter

Levi, Antonia. 2006. "The Americanization of Anime and Manga: Negotiating Popular Culture. " In Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Japanese Animation, edited by Steven T. Brown, 43-63. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

In-Text References (CMOS 17th ed.)

In Chicago Author-Date style, citations in the text are appear in parentheses right after the content cited, before the final punctuation of the sentence. In-text citations for books and articles are identical. They include the author's last name and the year of publication. The page number is required if a specific detail, passage, or quote is referenced. More than one source can be cited within the same parentheses, if they support the same sentence.

All sources that are either directly quoted or paraphrased should be cited within your research paper. If you mention the author's name before the direct quote or paraphrase then you do not need to include it in the citation.

  • Tilley describes apprenticeship as "watching and learning, then coaching followed by hands-on practice" (2008, 205).
  • Tilley describes apprenticeship in detail (2008).

OR if you do not mention the author's name before introducing the quote then it would need to appear in the citation.

  • Apprenticeship is described as "watching and learning, then coaching followed by hands-on practice" (Tilley 2008, 205).
  • Apprenticeship has been described as a step-by-step process (Tilley 2008, 205).

Template

( Author Date, Page)

Examples

One Author

(Sampsel 2008, 105)

More than One Author

(Bowles-Terry and Donovan 2016)

Multiple Sources

(Gullikson 2006; Junisbai, Lowe and Tagge 2016)

Formatting Requirements

Chicago Style uses two different systems for citing. This guide focuses on Author-Date system, commonly used in the sciences. For more information on the Notes & Bibliography system used in the humanities, see the "Chicago" tab.

The Reference List in Author-Date style should list all the sources cited in the work. Unlike a bibliography, it should not contain any sources NOT cited in the text. The in-text citations give just enough information to help the reader find the source on the reference list, where the complete citation is located.

  • The works cited list should be labeled "Reference List" at the top center of the page.
  • The list should be alphabetized by author last name.
  • All entries are single spaced, with double space in between each entry (unless your instructor advises otherwise).
  • The second line and all subsequent lines of a citation must be indented. 

Chicago Author-Date example:

Parenthetical citations in a text correspond to full citations in the reference list.