Chicago Book Citation Generator

How to cite a book in Chicago style

Chicago supports two citation systems: notes-bibliography (used in humanities — history, literature, the arts) and author-date (used in sciences and social sciences). Most assignments specify which. The bibliography entry is similar in both; the difference is how you cite in your text — a numbered footnote in notes-bibliography, a parenthetical (Author Year, Page) in author-date. The generator gives you all three forms (bibliography entry, full footnote, short-form note) so you can pick what you need.

Example Chicago book bibliography entry

Hahn, Daniel. The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Example Chicago full footnote

1. Daniel Hahn, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 142.

Example Chicago short-form note (subsequent citations)

2. Hahn, Oxford Companion, 217.

The slots you fill in for a book

• Author — bibliography: last name first (Hahn, Daniel). Footnote: first name first (Daniel Hahn). Two authors: Hahn, Daniel, and Sarah Mills. Three or more in the bibliography: list all. In notes: first author + et al.
• Title — book title italicized, headline case. No quotation marks.
• Edition — only if not the first: 2nd ed. Place after the title.
• Place of publication — city name, plus state or country only if needed for clarity (Cambridge, MA, vs. Cambridge, UK).
• Publisher — short form is fine: Oxford University Press, not Oxford University Press, Inc.
• Year — copyright year as printed on the title-verso page.
• Page number — required in the footnote when citing a specific passage; not needed in the bibliography entry.

Notes-bibliography vs. author-date

Both systems share the same bibliography entry (with minor differences). The in-text portion is what changes:

• Notes-bibliography — superscript footnote number in the text, full citation at the bottom of the page (or in endnotes). First citation = full footnote; subsequent = short-form note: Hahn, Oxford Companion, 217.
• Author-date — parenthetical (Hahn 2015, 142) in the text, full citation in a reference list (formatted slightly differently from the bibliography — year moves up next to the author).

Author-date bibliography entry

In author-date Chicago, the year moves to right after the author's name. Same content, slightly different shape:

Hahn, Daniel. 2015. The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Multiple authors, editors, and translators

• Two or three authors — list all. Bibliography: Hahn, Daniel, Sarah Mills, and Robert Chen. Notes: Daniel Hahn, Sarah Mills, and Robert Chen.
• Four to ten authors — bibliography lists all; footnote uses the first author + et al.
• Eleven or more — bibliography lists the first seven + et al.; footnote uses first author + et al.
• Editor instead of author — name first, then ed. or eds.: Hahn, Daniel, ed.
• With translator — translator follows the title, before edition: Title, trans. Translator Name (City: Publisher, Year).

E-books, library catalogs, and online editions

For e-books, Chicago wants you to identify the format if it might matter for retrieval (page numbers vary across e-readers). Add a format note after the year: Kindle, EPUB, or the URL of the library/publisher edition. For a book accessed through a library database, include the URL or DOI at the end. For most assignments, the print citation is fine — and is what you should give when you can.

Common Chicago book mistakes

• Don't mix notes-bibliography and author-date in the same paper. Pick one — your assignment usually tells you which.
• Don't use a period in the footnote where the bibliography uses one. Footnotes use commas to separate author from title and title from publisher info: Daniel Hahn, Oxford Companion, 142. Bibliography uses periods.
• Don't drop the page number from a footnote when you're citing a specific claim. The whole point of the footnote is to point readers to the passage.
• Don't use ibid. anymore. Chicago 17 dropped it in favor of the short-form note.
• Don't write out the full publisher name. "Oxford University Press" is enough; you don't need "Inc." or "Press, Ltd."

How the generator works

Paste an ISBN and we hit Open Library, Google Books, and WorldCat to pull authors, title, edition, publisher, place, and year. The CSL engine renders Chicago formatting — bibliography entry, first-citation footnote, and short-form note all at once. We default to notes-bibliography (the more common system); switch the style pill to author-date if you need that instead.