Chicago Citation

Bibliography

While defaulting to a full bibliography is usually safest practice, there are a variety of types of bibliography that are used in different contexts. Options include:

• Full Bibliography: includes all works cited in both the text and notes, except for personal communications. Additional relevant works not specifically cited in the text or notes can also be included.
• Selected Bibliography: if the author is creating a bibliography that does not include all works cited in the text and notes, it must be titled Selected Bibliography, Suggested Readings, or Further Readings. It should also include an explanation of the principles for selecting specific items to list.
• Annotated Bibliography: similar to a full bibliography, but also includes annotations that are the author's brief commentary to the reader about each source.

See the rest of this guide for examples of how to format bibliography entries for specific kinds of sources.

Bibliography vs. Notes

While the notes in the text and the bibliography at the end both contain complete citations (with the exception of shortened note citations), there are some differences in how they are formatted. Some common differences include:

• Author Name: In notes, all authors names are listed in the order [first name] [last name]. In the bibliography, the first author's name is inverted [last name], [first name] for purposes of alphabetization.
• Separating Punctuation: In notes, major elements like author and title are generally separated with commas. In the bibliography, they are generally separated with periods.
• Page Numbers: In notes, listed page numbers refer to the pages of the specific content being cited. In the bibliography, page numbers show the full page range of book chapters or journal articles and are not listed at all for entire books.
• Indentation: In notes, there is no required indentation, although the entire note can be first line indented. In the bibliography, each entry has a hanging indent.

See the example below for an illustration of these differences, and the rest of this guide provides examples of note, shortened note, and bibliography formats for different types of works.

Bibliography Format & Order

Format

The bibliography should be placed at the end of the text, but before an index. In some contexts, a separate bibliography for individual chapters of a larger work would be appropriate.

See above for information on different types of bibliographies and sections 14.61–64 in The Chicago Manual for more formatting guidance.

Order

See sections 14.65–71 in The Chicago Manual for full guidance on arrangement on entries in a bibliography.

Entries should be ordered alphabetically by surname of the first author. For more information on alphabetizing (including letter-by-letter and word-by-word approaches) see sections 16.56–93 in The Chicago Manual.

For entries with more than one author:

• Single-author entries always precede multiauthor entries with the same name.
• Only the first author's name is inverted for multiauthor entries.
• Entries with the same first author but different co-authors are alphabetized by the coauthors' last names (regardless of the number of coauthors).

For multiple entries by the same author:

• Alphabetize by title.
• Ignore an initial The, A, or An in a title when alphabetizing.