How to Do a Chicago Style Bibliography: Format, Examples, and Common Mistakes

A bibliography in Chicago style is required for essays, research papers, and scholarly articles in the humanities, history, and related fields. Whether you're a student at UCLA, Stanford, or MIT, or a researcher preparing a manuscript for academic publication, knowing how to do a Chicago style bibliography correctly is one of the most practical citation skills you can develop. A bibliography formatted incorrectly can cost you points on an assignment, delay a submission, or signal to a journal editor that the manuscript needs further preparation before review. This guide covers what you need to know: what a Chicago bibliography is, how to format entries for every major source type, and how to avoid the mistakes most writers make.

What Is a Chicago Style Bibliography?

A Chicago style bibliography is an alphabetically organized list of all sources used in a paper or article, appearing at the end of the document. It's part of the Chicago Manual of Style citation system, originally developed by the University of Chicago and now in its 18th edition (September 2024). Chicago style is used primarily in the humanities, including history, literature, arts, and religious studies, and is also widely used in some social sciences.

A bibliography in Chicago style differs from a reference list in other citation systems in one important way. It includes all sources consulted in the preparation of the paper, not only those directly quoted or paraphrased in the text. A source you read for background research but didn't directly cite still belongs in the bibliography. For a broader overview of how Chicago compares to APA and MLA, read our overview of citation styles.

Chicago Bibliography vs Reference List: Which System Are You Using?

Chicago offers two citation systems, and the format of your end-of-paper source list depends on which one your paper uses. The Notes and Bibliography system (used in history, literature, religious studies, and the arts) ends with a bibliography that includes all sources consulted. The Author-Date system (used in economics, anthropology, and the sciences when Chicago is required) ends with a reference list that includes only sources directly cited, and places the year of publication immediately after the author's name.

The rest of this guide focuses on bibliography formatting in the Notes and Bibliography system. For a full explanation of how the two systems differ, when to use each one, and how to choose between them, see our complete Chicago Style guide. The complete guide also covers Turabian (the simplified version of Chicago used for student papers and dissertations) and the changes introduced in the 18th edition.

How to Format a Chicago Style Bibliography

The Chicago style bibliography appears at the end of your paper on a new page. The formatting rules that apply to the bibliography as a whole:

• The page heading "Bibliography" is centered at the top of the page and may be bolded depending on your institution's requirements.
• Entries are listed in alphabetical order by the author's last name.
• Each entry uses a hanging indent: the first line of each entry is flush with the left margin, and all subsequent lines are indented by 0.5 inches.
• Entries are single-spaced within each entry, with one blank line between entries. This differs from the double-spacing used throughout the body of the paper.
• If you're listing two or more works by the same author, replace the author's name in subsequent entries with a three-em dash (———) followed by a period.

Chicago Style Bibliography Examples by Source Type

Print Books

The general format for a print book in a Chicago style bibliography is:

AuthorLastName, AuthorFirstName. Title of Book in Title Case. Publisher, Year.

Example:

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Penguin Classics, 2003.

For a book with two authors, only the first author's name is inverted. For example, a history text used by students at Stanford's history department might be cited as:

Kennedy, David M., and Lizabeth Cohen. The American Pageant: A History of the American People. Cengage Learning, 2016.

For an eBook, add the format or platform at the end of the entry: "Kindle edition" or "PDF e-book." Chicago 18th edition no longer requires the publisher's city in book citations for works published since 1900, so the city is omitted in the examples above. Earlier editions required it.

Magazine, Journal, and Newspaper Articles

For periodical sources including academic journal articles, magazine articles, and newspaper articles, the format includes both the article title and the publication name:

AuthorLastName, AuthorFirstName. "Title of Article in Title Case." Title of Publication Volume, no. Issue (Year): Page range.

Example of an academic journal article, the type commonly cited in papers written by researchers at MIT or UCLA:

Chomsky, Noam. "Formal Properties of Grammars." Handbook of Mathematical Psychology 2, no. 14 (1963): 323–418.

For a newspaper article accessed online:

Gibbons-Neff, Thomas, and Mujib Mashal. "U.S. Is Quietly Reducing Its Troop Force in Afghanistan." New York Times, October 21, 2019. https://nyti.ms/31xXNQb.

Websites and Online Sources

For websites and online sources, include the author name, page title, site name, publication or last modified date, and URL:

AuthorLastName, AuthorFirstName. "Title of Page." Name of Site. Month Day, Year. URL.

Example:

Fisher, Patti J. "How to Write a Strong Thesis Statement." Editor World. March 15, 2024. https://www.editorworld.com/article/how-to-write-a-strong-thesis-statement.

If no author is listed, begin the entry with the title of the page. If no date is available, use "n.d." in place of the date.

Edited Books and Book Chapters

For a chapter in an edited book, the chapter author is listed first, followed by the chapter title, then the editor and book title:

AuthorLastName, AuthorFirstName. "Title of Chapter." In Title of Book, edited by EditorFirstName EditorLastName, page range. Publisher, Year.

Example, using a source commonly cited in Stanford humanities courses:

Said, Edward W. "Orientalism Reconsidered." In Literature, Politics and Theory, edited by Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iversen, and Diana Loxley, 210–229. Methuen, 1986.

Chicago 18th edition made the page range optional in bibliography entries for chapters in edited books, though it remains required in the footnote. The page range is included in the example above because most journal and publisher style guides still expect it.

Theses and Dissertations

For doctoral dissertations and master's theses, include the type of document and the institution in the entry:

AuthorLastName, AuthorFirstName. "Title of Thesis or Dissertation." PhD diss. / MA thesis, University Name, Year.

Example, using an MIT doctoral dissertation:

Chen, Wei. "Computational Models of Language Acquisition in Bilingual Children." PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019.

Common Chicago Style Bibliography Mistakes to Avoid

• Using sentence case for article titles. Chicago style bibliography entries use headline-style capitalization (title case) for article and chapter titles, with most major words capitalized. Book titles also use title case. This differs from APA style, where article titles use sentence case.
• Forgetting the hanging indent. Chicago bibliography entries require a hanging indent, where the first line is flush with the left margin and all subsequent lines are indented 0.5 inches. Applying a standard paragraph indent instead produces the wrong visual effect and doesn't comply with Chicago style.
• Omitting sources used for background research. A bibliography lists all sources consulted in the preparation of the paper, not only those directly cited in the text. Sources read for background information belong in the bibliography even if they weren't directly quoted or paraphrased.
• Incorrect author name inversion for multiple authors. In Chicago style, only the first author's name is inverted (last name first). Subsequent authors are listed in normal order (first name last name). Inverting all authors is incorrect.
• Missing or incorrectly formatted URLs. For online sources, Chicago style requires the full URL at the end of the entry. Don't add a period after the URL. If a DOI is available, use the DOI in preference to a URL.
• Including the publisher's city. Chicago 18th edition (September 2024) dropped the publisher's city from book citations for works published since 1900. Citation managers and reference templates last updated before September 2024 are still inserting the city automatically, and that is now an error in current Chicago style.

Get Help With Your Chicago Citation Formatting

A correctly formatted Chicago style bibliography is an essential part of any academic paper or scholarly article. Getting it right requires attention to detail across every entry, and even experienced writers make formatting errors that affect their grade or their submission. Editor World's academic editing services include Chicago citation review, with editors who work in both Notes and Bibliography and Author-Date systems. For longer documents, our dissertation editing and journal article editing services apply the same standard at the document level.

Every editor is a native English speaker from the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada, with an advanced degree in their field. Every paper is reviewed by a real person, never by AI. To see who would be working on your manuscript, choose your own editor from the Editor World roster. A free sample edit of up to 300 words is available on request.

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This article was reviewed by the Editor World academic team. Editor World, founded in 2010 by Patti Fisher, PhD, provides professional editing and proofreading services for students, academics, and researchers worldwide. BBB A+ accredited since 2010 with 5.0/5 Google Reviews and 5.0/5 Facebook Reviews.