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Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) Citation Help

View examples, get interactive practice, and format your paper with Chicago Style citation

Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), 18th edition

The Chicago Manual of Style, referred to as CMOS, is a set of rules for writing, citing, and formatting research papers and publications. This style guide is most often used for academic writing in the arts and humanities. The manual is updated every several years to include guidelines on citing new forms of information and technology. The most recent 18th edition includes guidelines on citing sources generated by Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). 

Here is a comprehensive list of 'What's New in the CMOS 18th edition' from the Chicago Style website: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/help-tools/what-s-new.html.

The Chicago Manual of Style offers two distinct documentation methods, one for the humanities (Notes and Bibliography system) and one for the sciences (Author-Date system). This guide focuses on the Notes & Bibliography format, which is most common for Lone Star College classes.

Chicago Manual of Style 18th ed. cover

A Quick Overview of Chicago Format

      A quick overview of paper format requirements:

  • There is no particular required font, but Times New Roman, size 12, is typically requested by instructors.
  • A separate title page with proper formatting is typically required by instructors
  • Most of your paper will be double-spaced
  • Footnote entries & bibliography entries will be single-spaced. Footnotes will also use a "first line indent," making them look like a regular paragraph. Bibliography entries at the end of the paper will use a hanging indent like you've probably used in MLA and APA.
  • Footnote numbers are consecutive throughout the whole paper. If you re-use a source, it will get a new footnote number each time. 

Basic Chicago Citation Anatomy

In-Text (Footnote):
The first time you use a source, you'll use the full version of the footnote citation:

1. Barbara Erhlich White, "Renoir's Trip to Italy," Art Bulletin 51, no. 4 (1969): 341, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3048651

Every subsequent time you use a source, you'll use the shortened note form of the citation, which contains the author's last time, part of the source title, and whatever page number is relevant.

4. White, "Renoir's Trip," 347.
Bibliography:
Your bibliography citations will look very similar to your full-length footnotes and will be listed alphabetically according to the first word in each citation.

White, Barbara Ehrlich. "Renoir's Trip to Italy." Art Bulletin 51, no. 4 (1969): 333-51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3048651.

Shortened (Concise) Notes

The second (or subsequent) time a resource is referenced, use a shortened form of the citation.  The short form should include the last name of the author, a brief form of the title (formatted with italics or quotation marks as needed), and the page number.  For example:

      95. Miller, Quest, 81.

Note: Older versions of Chicago used Ibid. for consecutive references to the same source. This is no longer preferred, as of the 17th edition. You will use shortened notes for all footnote citations after your initial use of a source.

Other Citation Guides

Permission

Received permission to reproduce this Libguide from:

Lone Star College - University Park
Student Learning Resource Center
20515 SH 249, Building 12, 8th Floor
Houston, Texas 77070

LibGuide (http://upresearch.lonestar.edu/chicago)