This guide provides a brief summary of the rules of referencing sources for the 17th edition of The Chicago Style.
The Chicago Style 17th edition uses two types of format for referencing sources:
If you are unsure which format to use, you may ask your professor / supervisor.
For full details and more comprehensive examples, please consult this book.
The Author-Date system is commonly used in the sciences and social sciences. Works that are cited in the text are in parentheses - author's last name and year of publication. Every in-text citation created will correspond to the entries in the reference list (found at the end of the document). These references are arrange alphabetically according to the authors' names.
The samples below illustrates the Author-Date system. For many other examples, please click here.
Guidelines | Examples |
Books |
Reference list Cockcroft, Robert and Susan Cockcroft. 2005. Persuading People: An Introduction to Rhetoric. 2nd ed. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Hosseini, Khaled. 2007. The Kite Runner. London: Bloomsbury. In-text citations (Cockcroft and Cockcroft 2005, 60-65) (Hosseini 2007, 299–302) |
Journals |
Reference list Cho, Insu, Heejun Park, and Joseph Kichul Kim. 2014. "The relationship between motivation and information sharing about products and services on Facebook." Behaviour & Information Technology 34 (9): 858-868. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2014.988177. In-text citations (Cho, Park, and Kichul 2014, 3-4) |
Newspaper article |
Reference list Montague, Zach. 2021. "Biden Celebrates Progress Against Virus, but Acknowledges Hurdles Ahead." New York Times, July 4, 2021. In-text citations (Montague, 2021) |
The Notes-Bibliography (NB) system is usually used in the humanities (e.g., literature, history and the arts) to give authors a systematic way of referencing their work using footnotes, endnotes and assisted by the use of a bibliography. NB uses numbered footnotes in the text to lead readers to a shortened citation found at the end of the document. Each note and subscript number in the text correlates with each other and matches to a fuller citation in the list of bibliography.
The samples below illustrates the NB styles. For many other examples, please click here.
Guidelines | Examples |
Books |
Notes Bibliography entry Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. |
E-book |
Notes 1. Han Byung Chul, The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), chap. 3, EBSCOhost eBook Collection. Bibliography entry Han, Byung-Chul. The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2017. EBSCOhost eBook Collection. |
Journals |
Notes 1. Jennifer Lantrip and Jacquelyn Ray, "Faculty Perceptions and Usage of OER at Oregon Community Colleges." Community College Journal of Research and Practice (2020) 7-8, https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2020.1838967. Bibliography entry Lantrip, Jennifer, and Jacquelyn Ray. "Faculty Perceptions and Usage of OER at Oregon Community Colleges." Community College Journal of Research and Practice (2020): 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2020.1838967. |
Newspaper article |
Notes 1. Cheryl Tan, "Steady queue at supermarkets, pharmacies for free oximeter on first day of collection," Straits Times, July 5, 2021, https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/steady-queue-at-supermarkets-pharmacies-for-free-oximeter-on-first-day-of-collection. Bibliography entry |
The Chicago Manual of style has recommendations on how to cite AI tools. You need to credit ChatGPT when you reproduce its words within your own work, but that information should be put in the text or in a note—not in a bibliography or reference list.
For most types of writing, you may acknowledge the AI tool in your text (e.g., “The following recipe for pizza dough was generated by ChatGPT”).
Author-date
If you’re using author-date instead of notes, any information not in the text would be placed in a parenthetical text reference.
Example:
“(ChatGPT, July 7, 2023).”
But do not cite ChatGPT in a bibliography or reference list.
Notes and Bibliography
If you need a more formal citation—for example, for a student paper or for a research article—a numbered footnote or endnote :
FOOTNOTE FORM
1. Text generated by ChatGPT, July 7, 2023, Open AI, https://chat.openai.com/chat.
ChatGPT is the author of the content, and the date is the date the text was generated. OpenAI (the organization that developed ChatGPT) is then listed as the publisher or sponsor of the content.
If the prompt hasn’t been included in the text, it can be included in the note:
7. ChatGPT, response to “Explain how to make Shepherd's Pie,” July 7, 2023, Open AI.
IN-TEXT EXAMPLE
The following recipe for Shepherd’s Pie was generated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, July 7, 2023.
If you’ve edited the AI-generated text, you should say so in the text or at the end of the note (e.g., “edited for style and content”).
For details, please go to The Chicago Manual of Style Online: Citation, Documentation of Sources
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