Chicago offers multiple options for in-text citation: notes & bibliography (footnotes/endnotes) and author-date (parenthetical). This guide will focus on citation using footnotes. The advice will largely apply to endnotes as well, with the major difference being where the notes are located.
Footnotes will provide complete citation information and will usually be accompanied by a bibliography of all the material referenced.
Footnotes should be provided any time a source is directly quoted, indirectly quoted/paraphrased, or summarized. In other words, if either words or ideas for a portion of your paper came from a source or sources, they should be footnoted.
IMPORTANT: Despite both notes and the bibliography providing a complete citation, there are formatting differences between them. This guide will show both the note format and bibliography format.
Each footnote will include a number in the text and a corresponding number with citation at the bottom of the page. Word processors such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs can automatically insert footnotes in the text with the corresponding number at the bottom of the page. These auto-formatted footnotes will also dynamically number themselves as you add new citations at any point and will manage page formatting.
Each in-text number corresponds to that footnote at the bottom of the page. In-text numbers will sequentially increase from the start of the document to the end. If a previously cited source is cited again later in the paper, it receives a new footnote.
In general, the first time a source is cited it should received a complete citation in the footnote. After this, however, subsequent citations to a previously cited work should use a shortened citation. The basic form of a shortened citation is Author(s) Last Name(s), Shortened Work Title, page number(s). See the rest of this guide for instructions on both full and shortened footnote citations for different source types.