Need Author-Date instead?
The full Chicago Citation Generator handles both Notes-Bibliography and Author-Date — pick the system that matches your assignment.
Paste a DOI, URL, ISBN, or source details. Get a properly formatted Chicago footnote (full first-reference form) plus the matching bibliography entry. Built for the Notes-Bibliography style used in history, art, philosophy, and the humanities. Free, no signup.
Tip: Paste a DOI or ISBN for the cleanest match — we pull authors, title, publisher, and date directly.
Chicago has two systems. Notes-Bibliography uses footnotes (or endnotes) for in-text citations and a separate bibliography at the end. Author-Date uses parenthetical citations (Smith 2023) like APA. Notes-Bibliography is the dominant form in history, art history, philosophy, religious studies, and most humanities — if your professor said "Chicago" without specifying, this is almost certainly what they meant. Turabian is a student-paper variant of the same system.
Chicago footnotes have two forms. The full note appears the first time you cite a source — it's the long form with everything. The shortened note appears for every subsequent reference to that same source — author last name, short title, page number. This is the part most generators miss. Here's the same source in both forms:
Full note (first citation):
1. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 24.
Shortened note (every later citation):
7. Kahneman, Thinking, 156.
Bibliography entry (alphabetized list at the end):
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
2. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases," Science 185, no. 4157 (1974): 1124–31, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4157.1124.
3. Hannah Arendt, "Truth and Politics," in Between Past and Future, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Penguin, 1993), 227–64.
4. Sarah Mendelsohn, "What Is Greek Tragedy For?" The New Yorker, March 24, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/03/what-is-greek-tragedy-for.
Chicago's 17th edition (2017) and 18th edition (2024) recommend against ibid. in favor of shortened notes. Use the shortened form (Kahneman, Thinking, 156) instead of Ibid., 156. Many style guides still allow ibid., but the modern preference is the named short form because it stays clear when a footnote is moved or a passage is reordered. The generator follows the modern recommendation.
A DOI hits Crossref directly — that's the canonical source for journal articles. ISBNs go to library and publisher records. URLs get scraped for metadata. Once the record lands, the CSL engine renders the citation in Chicago Notes-Bibliography format: the footnote (full form) plus the matching bibliography entry. For repeat citations of the same source, you can build the shortened form from the full note's first-name-first author and a 2–4 word version of the title — the bibliography entry stays the same throughout the paper.
Notes-Bibliography uses footnotes or endnotes for citations and a separate bibliography at the end — common in history, philosophy, art, and religious studies. Author-Date uses parenthetical (Author Year) citations like APA — common in social sciences and physical sciences within the Chicago tradition. Same Chicago Manual; two systems. This page generates Notes-Bibliography. For Author-Date, use the main Chicago Citation Generator.
Format: Author last name, shortened title (italicized for books, in quotes for articles), page number(s). Example: Kahneman, Thinking, 156. Keep the short title to 2–4 distinctive words. Use the shortened note for every reference after the first one — even if you're citing the same source two footnotes in a row.
Use shortened notes. Chicago's 17th and 18th editions recommend against ibid. because shortened notes stay readable when a footnote is moved or restructured. Older Chicago papers used ibid. for consecutive references to the same source — your professor may still accept it, but the modern style is the named short form.
Same content, different placement. Footnotes appear at the bottom of the page; endnotes appear at the end of the chapter or paper. Chicago accepts both; pick whichever your instructor or publisher prefers. The format of each note is identical regardless of placement.
Yes, in most cases. Notes-Bibliography papers include both: footnotes throughout the text for citations, and a complete bibliography at the end listing every source. Some short papers (or instructor preferences) use one or the other — confirm with your assignment guidelines.
Use the shortened note. Don't write "ibid." anymore — the modern preference is to repeat the shortened form: Kahneman, Thinking, 24. If the second citation is to the exact same page, you can use just the page number: Kahneman, Thinking, 24. followed by Kahneman, Thinking, 26.
Turabian is a student-paper version of Chicago, written by Kate Turabian. The citation rules are identical to Chicago Notes-Bibliography (and Author-Date). Turabian adds guidance on paper formatting, headings, tables, and front matter — but the citations themselves match Chicago. If your instructor said "Turabian," this generator's output is correct.
The full Chicago Citation Generator handles both Notes-Bibliography and Author-Date — pick the system that matches your assignment.
Our deep-dive on Chicago Notes-Bibliography covers ibid. (and why Chicago dropped it), shortened notes, and book vs. article formats.
The Chicago Author-Date guide walks through the parenthetical alternative — helpful if you're choosing between the two systems.
Need APA, MLA, or Harvard for the same source? The main Citation Generator handles every major style.
Save every Chicago citation you generate to your Works Cited library, then export the finished bibliography to Word, BibTeX, or RIS.
Got a Chicago note and want to confirm it? Run it through the AI Citation Checker to verify the source exists and the metadata matches.