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Chicago Citation

A guide to citing source according to the Chicago Manual of Style

Book Citation Notes & Format

See sections 14.100–163 in The Chicago Manual for more information.

Use the listed elements below, where applicable, for citations in both notes and the bibliography.

Variations on the order, inclusion, and punctuation of elements will exist between note and bibliography forms.

See below for examples of footnotes, shortened notes, and bibliography entries for a variety of book types.

Elements to include when citing a book from section 14.100 of The Chicago Manual:

  1. Author: full name of author(s) or editor(s) or, if no author or editor is listed, name of institution standing in their place
  2. Title: full title of the book, including subtitle if there is one
  3. Editor, compiler, or translator, if any, if listed on title page in addition to author
  4. Edition, if not the first
  5. Volume: total number of volumes if multivolume work is referred to as a whole; individual number if single volume of multivolume work is cited, and title of individual volume if applicable
  6. Series title if applicable, and volume number within series if series is numbered
  7. Facts of publication: city, publisher, and date
  8. Page number or numbers if applicable
  9. For books consulted online, a URL (or DOI-based URL); for other types of electronic books, the application, format, device, or medium consulted

One Author

Footnotes (full for first citation then shortened)

1. Frank M. Turner, John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 318–21.
2. Turner, John Henry Newman, 98–103.

Bibliography

Turner, Frank M. John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Two or Three Authors

Footnotes (full for first citation then shortened)

1. Julius S. Held and Donald Posner, 17th and 18th Century Art: Baroque Painting, Sculpture, Architecture (New York: H. N. Adams, 1971), 232–41.
2. C. Daniel Batson, Patricia Schoenrade, and W. Larry Ventis, Religion and the Individual: A Social-Psychological Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 373.
3. Held and Posner, 17th and 18th Century Art, 180–83.
4. Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis, Religion and the Individual, 177–78.

Bibliography

Batson, C. Daniel, Patricia Schoenrade, and W. Larry Ventis. Religion and the Individual: A Social-Psychological Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Held, Julius S., and Donald Posner. 17th and 18th Century Art: Baroque Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1971.

Four or More Authors

For books, it is more common to see four or more editors responsible for an entire book than four or more authors. For books with multiple authors where each author is responsible for a chapter or entry rather than the whole book, see the tab on citing book chapters.

For books with four to ten authors, list all author names in the bibliography and list the first author name followed by et al. in the footnotes.

For books with more than ten authors, list the first seven author names followed by et al. in the bibliography and list the first author name followed by et al. in the footnotes.

In the example below, there are no page numbers listed because the edited book is being referenced as a whole.

Footnotes (full for first citation then shortened)

1. Helen Alford et al., eds., Rediscovering Abundance: Interdisciplinary Essays on Wealth, Income, and Their Distribution in the Catholic Social Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2006).
2. Alford et al., Rediscovering Abundance.

Bibliography

Alford, Helen, Charles M. A. Clark, S. A. Cortright, and Michael J. Naughton, eds. Rediscovering Abundance: Interdisciplinary Essays on Wealth, Income, and Their Distribution in the Catholic Social Tradition. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2006.

Editor or Translator in Place of Author

Footnotes (full for first citation then shortened)

1. Eric Lane and Nina Shengold, eds., The Actor's Book of Scenes from New Plays (New York: Penguin Books, 1988), 81, 87.
2. Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, trans., The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, 1996), 49–83.
3. Lane and Shengold, The Actor's Book, 27.
4. Wise, Abegg, Jr., and Cook, Dead Sea Scrolls, 8.

Bibliography

Lane, Eric, and Nina Shengold, eds. The Actor's Book of Scenes from New Plays. New York: Penguin Books, 1988.

Wise, Michael, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, trans. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, 1996.

Editor and/or Translator with Author

Footnotes (full for first citation then shortened)

1. William Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV: Text Edited from the First Quarto, Context and Sources, Criticism, ed. Gordon McMullan, Norton Critical Editions, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 60.
2. Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, trans. Gregory Rabassa (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 161–72.
3. Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, 44.
4. Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 76.

Bibliography

García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Translated by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

Shakespeare, William. 1 Henry IV: Text Edited from the First Quarto, Context and Sources, Criticism. Edited by Gordon McMullan. Norton Critical Editions, 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003.

E-books

E-books requiring a specific access device (e.g., Kindle, NOOk, etc.) or using an particular filetype (e.g., EPUB or PDF) should have the device or filetype noted at the end of the citation.

E-books consulted online should include a URL, especially a DOI-based URL when available.

Page or location numbers:

  • Many e-book formats lack fixed page numbers.
  • For formats without fixed page numbers, cite chapter numbers or section headings in place of pages in your footnotes.
  • When specific locator information for non-fixed page formats is necessary, list both the location and total number of locations (i.e. loc. 189 of 4021). This allows even users of other formats to know roughly where in the text to look.

Footnotes (full for first citation then shortened)

1. George E. Dutton, A Vietnamese Moses: Philiphê Bình and the Geographies of Early Modern Catholicism (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017), 29, http://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.22.
2. Pascal Lottaz and Ingemar Ottosson, Sweden, Japan, and the Long Second World War: 1931–1945 (London: Routledge, 2022), chap. 4, EPUB.
3. Dutton, A Vietnamese Moses, 105.
4. Lottaz and Ottosson, Sweden, Japan, chap. 5.

Bibliography

Dutton, George E. A Vietnamese Moses: Philiphê Bỉnh and the geographies of early modern Catholicism. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017. http://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.22.

Lottaz, Pascal, and Ingemar Ottosson. Sweden, Japan, and the Long Second World War: 1931–1945. London: Routledge, 2022. EPUB.