Chicago notes-bibliography style: a complete guide
Chicago's notes-bibliography system is the workhorse citation format of the humanities — history, art history, philosophy, religion, and music all default to it. Footnotes carry the citation; the bibliography ties everything together. If you'd rather not format every note by hand, our Chicago citation generator produces full notes, shortened notes, and bibliography entries from a DOI, URL, or ISBN.
What is Chicago notes-bibliography style?
Chicago notes-bibliography (NB) is one of two citation systems defined by The Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition, 2017). It is the default in history, art history, philosophy, religion, music, and most humanities disciplines outside literature. Citations appear as numbered footnotes or endnotes, with a parallel bibliography at the end of the document.
The other Chicago system — author-date — uses parenthetical references and is preferred in the social sciences. Both share the same publication manual but produce visibly different documents.
Use NB when your discipline favors discursive notes (history is the canonical example) or when you need to cite primary sources, archival documents, and other materials that don't fit cleanly into an author-date list.
Footnotes vs. endnotes
Chicago NB allows either footnotes (at the bottom of each page) or endnotes (collected at the end of the chapter or document). The choice is editorial — your instructor, journal, or publisher will specify. The format of the note itself is identical in both cases.
Note numbers are superscripted in the text and run sequentially through the chapter or article. Place the superscript at the end of the sentence or clause, after any closing punctuation.
He argued that the colonial frontier was "a moving zone of negotiation," not a fixed line.1
First note vs. shortened note
The first time you cite a source, give a full note — author, full title, publication details, and the specific page. For every subsequent citation of the same source, use a shortened note: the author's last name, a short form of the title, and the page.
1. Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018), 142.
5. Lepore, These Truths, 215.
Bibliography format
The bibliography appears at the end of the document under the heading Bibliography, alphabetized by author surname, with hanging indents. Bibliography entries differ from footnotes in three ways: the author's name is inverted (Last, First), elements are separated by periods rather than commas, and there is no specific page reference.
Lepore, Jill. These Truths: A History of the United States. New York: W. W. Norton, 2018.
Journal articles
Journal articles use the same author-title-publication-page sequence in both notes and bibliography, with formatting differences.
Note format
1. Author First Last, "Article Title," Journal Name Volume, no. Issue (Year): page, https://doi.org/xxxxx.
1. Mary L. Dudziak, "The Cold War as a Civil Rights Story," Journal of American History 91, no. 3 (2004): 932, https://doi.org/10.2307/3660779.
Bibliography format
Dudziak, Mary L. "The Cold War as a Civil Rights Story." Journal of American History 91, no. 3 (2004): 925–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/3660779.
Books and book chapters
Books in Chicago NB include the author, title (italicized), publication city, publisher, and year. Page references appear in notes but not in bibliography entries.
Whole book
1. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York: Vintage, 1996), 47.
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991. New York: Vintage, 1996.
Chapter in an edited book
1. Sara Ahmed, "Affective Economies," in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 38.
Ahmed, Sara. "Affective Economies." In The Affect Theory Reader, edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, 29–51. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Websites, blogs, and archival material
Online sources require a URL. Include an access date only if the page is undated or likely to change. For archival documents, include the box and folder, the collection name, and the repository.
1. Sarah Bond, "Why We Need to Start Seeing the Classical World in Color," Hyperallergic, June 7, 2017, https://hyperallergic.com/383776/.
1. Letter from Jane Addams to Louise de Koven Bowen, March 4, 1912, box 12, folder 7, Jane Addams Papers, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
Common mistakes to avoid
Mixing note and bibliography punctuation
Notes use commas to separate elements; bibliography entries use periods. Mixing the two is the single most common Chicago NB error.
Forgetting the page reference in the note
Footnotes almost always end with a specific page number (or page range). Without it, the reader cannot verify the claim. Only generic references — "see Lepore for a comprehensive history" — omit pages.
Italicizing article titles
Article and chapter titles take quotation marks; only standalone works (books, journal names, films, albums) are italicized. Reversing this is a frequent slip.
Quick summary
| Feature | Chicago NB rule |
|---|---|
| Citation marker | Superscripted note number after punctuation |
| First citation | Full note with all bibliographic details |
| Subsequent citations | Shortened note: Author, Short Title, page |
| Bibliography heading | Bibliography (centered or flush left) |
| Note separators | Commas between elements, period at end |
| Bibliography separators | Periods between elements |
| Article titles | In quotation marks, headline case |
| Book/journal titles | Italicized, headline case |
| Page numbers in notes | Required for specific claims |
| DOI/URL | Required when available; no trailing period |
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