Why Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS)? CMoS is a “less lossful” style. Some styles, such as APA, purposely make you lose information that you know for the sake of sticking to a style. Note that there are two Chicago styles: Documentation I and Documentation II. Documentation I is the original Notes and Bibliography style. Documentation II is a more recent accommodation to styles that feature Author-Date references.

The Chicago Manual of Style, 2017, Online

We have copies of the 2017 edition at the Lending Desk, the Reference Stacks, and the Research Center:

Location	Call No.	Status
Reference Stacks	Z253 .C5714 2017	LIB USE ONLY
Lending Desk-Reserve	Z253 .C5714 2017	AVAILABLE
Research Center Desk	Z253 .C5714 2017	LIB USE ONLY
Law-Level 3 Reference	PN147 .C45 2017	LIB USE ONLY

 

There are three ways to learn Chicago style: 1) Read the Manual, 2) Citation by Example, and 3) Automatic Citation Generators.

1) Ready the Manual

The Entire Manual is online – see our library database list, or use this URL: http://du.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html

2) Citation by Example

Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide: http://du.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html  - note the tabs to switch between Notes and Bibliography and Author-Date styles. The Chicago style site also provides the same citation-by-example help for the related Turabian Notes/Bibliography and Turabian Author/Date styles: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/turabian_citationguide.html

Purdue University OWL: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/01/  - A very useful site.

Basic citation rules: 1) give enough information to make it findable; 2) be consistent throughout your bibliography.

3) Citation Generators

Citation generator for Chicago Notes-Biblography: Citation Machine: http://www.citationmachine.net/chicago/cite-a-journal

Citation generator for Chicago Author-Date: CiteThisForMe: https://www.citethisforme.com/chicago-author-date

For journal articles get Chicago citations from Summon (library home page) and Google Scholar. It should be noted that Summon shows Chicago Author-Date style, while Google Scholar shows Chicago Notes-Bibliography style.

Citation from Compass:

Donnelly, Jack. 1982. Human rights and human dignity: An analytic critique of non-western conceptions of human rights. The American Political Science Review 76 (2): 303-16.

Same citation from Google Scholar:

Donnelly, Jack. "Human rights and human dignity: An analytic critique of non-Western conceptions of human rights." American Political Science Review 76, no. 02 (1982): 303-316.

 

For books, use either Open WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org/) or the subscription version (on library home page under WorldCat.

Please realize that all automated style generators are imperfect. You need to review their output carefully. But they will get you close to the final answer.

Other General Considerations

1. Locate the author(s). Authors may be personal authors, or what we call “corporate” authors (organizations, government entities, companies, IGOs, NGOs, etc.).
2. Find the title. Be sure to include full title, including subtitle if there is one.
3. Find the publisher. In some cases the publisher is the same as the author.
4. Include URLs to open web content (freely available web sites and PDFs). If content is from an online licensed database, I recommend making no mention of the format. Online is just a format, like microfiche. It makes no difference how another researcher may access the content.  Although CMoS shows URLs for journal content such as JSTOR, I consider this optional. Online is merely a format. It makes no difference whether a journal article is access in print or online, so the inclusion of a URL is often needless “noise” in a citation.
5. Include technical report numbers. E.g.
   1. RL30588 – Congressional Research Service number
   2. ED533572 – ERIC number
   3. FBIS-NES-91-232 – FBIS number
6. If a UN document, be sure to include the UN symbol number.
   1. A/HRC/22/7
   2. A/AC.109/2013/14
   3. E/2013/20
   4. S/PV.4766(RESUMPTION1)
7. US federal publication (government documents) can be complex. Here are some helpful online guides.
   1. Official Chicago Manual - http://du.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/search.epl?q=documents
   2. ProQuest Congressional Help - http://congressional.proquest.com/help/congressional/gh_pubtypes.html
   3. Bowdoin College Library, showing Chicago Notes-Bibliography style - https://library.bowdoin.edu/help/chicago-gov.pdf
   4. Indiana University Library. You may need to adapt citations to Chicago style: https://libraries.indiana.edu/guide-citing-us-government-publications
   5. Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (hosted on Cornell’s Legal Information Institute site) - https://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/