Citation Formatting

The way in which citations are formatted in Chicago style is extremely specific but not that complex. With a few precautions the conventions of the style are easy to follow.

Footnotes/ Endnotes

The Basics

• Footnotes should appear on the same page as the text they are noting.
• Footnotes should not be broken across multiple pages.
• Footnotes and endnotes should always be single spaced.
• Footnotes and endnotes should always have the same same size and type of font as the body of the essay.
• Notes should be at the end of a sentence after a period.

Multiple Citations

• It is acceptable if not encouraged to put a footnote at the end of a paragraph (or even multiple paragraphs) if all the information in those paragraph(s) came from the same source.
• If you wish to cite more then one source in a citation, separate the two sources with a semi colon. For example:

Runiciman 107-108. ;  Tyerman 65. ; Dana Carleton Munro, "The Speech of Pope Urban II. At Clermont, 1095," The American Historical Review 11, no. 2 (1906): 231 - 242.

Supplementary Citations

• Footnotes and endnotes may contain supplementary text according to Chicago style. If a footnote or source warrants further explanation one may insert additional text after a footnote. For example:

Tyreman, The First Crusade, 65-66. Tyreman notes that that the council at Clermont was a bit of a flop in the short term "as very few magnates attended".

• Also acceptable is placing an plain explanatory foot note with no citation, for example a definition of a term which some readers may not be familiar with or a further explanation of a complex passage.
• If one wishes to cite an explanatory footnote then one should put the citation after the explanation itself. For example:

Reponsa are questions from the Jewish community to acknowledged experts of Talmudic law. Chazan, In The Year 1096,8.

Bibliographies

• Bibliographic entries should always have the first line flush with the left margin, but all lines after the first in each entry should be indented
• Bibliographic entries are always single spaced, although there should be a blank line in between each entry.
• Bibliographic entries are in alphabetical order based on authors last names.

Just describing the rules for bibliographies in Chicago style without demonstration can be a bit unclear so here is a sample bibliography.

Bronstein, Judith. "The Crusades and the Jews: Some Reflections on the 1096 Massacre." History Compass 58, no. 4 (June 2007): 1268-1279.

Chazan, Robert. God, humanity, and history: the Hebrew First Crusade narratives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Chazan, Robert. In The Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996.