Helpful Tips for Chicago Style Formatting

How-To,College Writing,Studying & Writing

Chicago Manual Style. Though you may hope that your professor is requesting that you turn in a deep dish pizza with your finished essay, this is not the case.

Image courtesy of cookdiary.net

Image courtesy of cookdiary.net

While Chicago style formatting is not as delicious as deep dish pizza, it is no cause for alarm. Some people cling to MLA as it is familiar to them, but Chicago is very easy, and has a cleaner look to it on the page.  Do not worry, you too can learn this wonderful formatting style!

Here are simple tips for formatting your paper in Chicago style:

-If you are talking about a book or the title of a periodical, italicize it.

-If you are talking about an article or the title of a chapter, it get less fancy “quotation marks.”

-When you cite a source, place a superscript number at the end of the sentence. This number will correspond to a footnote at the bottom of the page. Not sure how that works in Word? It should look something like this:

Image courtesy of community.thomsonreuters.com

Image courtesy of community.thomsonreuters.com

How do you format these citations or in-text citations you ask? Never fear! It is also quite simple.

For the footnote:

1Firstname, Lastname. Fancy Title of Book. (Fancy place of publication: Publisher name, publication year), page number(s).

1Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility. (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002), 254.

For the bibliography:

Lastname, Firstname. Fancy Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher name, publication

year.

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002.

 

The formatting for an article in a periodical is also very similar and simple.

For the footnote:

2Firstname, Lastname. “Fancy Title of Article,” Capitalized Journal Title. issue number, volume number (year of publication): page number(s) that you are citing.

2Misty, Krueger. “From Marginalia to Juvenilia: Jane Austen’s Vindication of the Stuarts.”

Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. 56, no. 2 (2015): 250.

For the bibliography:

2Lastname, Firstname. “Fancy Title of Article,” Capitalized Journal Title. issue number, volume

number (year of publication): page number(s) cited.

2Krueger, Misty. “From Marginalia to Juvenilia: Jane Austen’s Vindication of the Stuarts.”

Eighteenth Century: Theory And Interpretation. 56, no. 2 (2015): 243-259.

More tips for the Bibliography:

-Just like with other citation methods, your bibliography should be in alphabetical order.

-If there are 2-3 authors, write out all of their names. If you have 4-10 authors, then still write out all of their names. However, just use the first of the names and “et al” in your footnotes.

 

If you have other questions about Chicago Manual Style, another wonderful resource is the OWL Purdue.

 

Happy citing!

-Hannah, peer tutor