What Is the Chicago Citation Style?
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In this video, we cover the basics of the Chicago Manual of Style. This writing format is popular amongst those in the editing field and may be the preferred style of many professors in technical writing, law, and even some English courses.
What Is Chicago Style?
When you hear 'Chicago style,' you may think of pizza, but it's also a formatting framework like APA and MLA. While APA and MLA are the most common types of manuscript formatting found in academic writing, you may run across Chicago style in reviewing articles, and you may be asked to use it as your primary framework, depending on your chosen field of study.
Introduction To The Chicago Manual Of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style, also known as CMS, covers manuscript preparation and publication, grammar, and documentation. It is a favored formatting style for those in the editing field. What makes CMS so unique is the use of notes, often referred to as footnotes or endnotes when citing sources in the text.
What Makes CMS Different?
CMS is preferred by many because it has built-in flexibility within the style, something appreciated by creative individuals. For instance, margins should be no less than one inch, but no greater than 1.5 inches. So, if 1.3-inch margins tickle your fancy, go for it.
In CMS, you can either use a title page or include the title on the first page of text. If using a title page, the title should be centered a third of the way down on the page. Your name and class information should come several lines later, also centered.
Footnotes
A big part of CMS is the use of notes. The first thing you will include is note numbers. Note numbers should begin with '1' and follow consecutively throughout the paper. In the text, note numbers should be superscripted. Note numbers should be placed in the text directly following the information being cited. Note numbers should be placed after punctuation.
In the notes section, numbers should be full-sized and followed by a period. The first line of a footnote is indented 0.5 inch from the left margin; subsequent lines within a footnote are left flushed.
The footnote should look like the one on your screen.
First, we see the footnote number. Next, we see the author's first and then last name written out. Following the comma, we see the title of the book and in parentheses the place of publication, colon, then publisher and year of the publication for a book. After the parentheses, we see the page number where information we cited can be found on.
Here is what your footnote would look like if you were citing a journal article.
First we see the footnote number, and the number should be full-sized. Next, we have the first and last name of the author. Following the comma, we see the name of the article in quotation marks. Next, we see the title of the journal, followed by the volume number. Following a comma, we have the issue number. In parentheses, we have the year of publication. Finally, we have a colon, then the page number of the article our information was found on.
Bibliography
Your bibliography should be the last page of your paper before the index. It should be labeled 'Bibliography' if using a bibliography and notes style. The most common use is bibliography and notes style, so that is what we will address in this video.
Let's walk our way through this sample book citation:
Place entries in alphabetical order starting with the author's name, then first name and middle initial. Next, we should see the title of the book. Following the period, we should see the city in which the publisher resides, followed by a colon. After the colon, we should see the name of the publisher, followed by a comma. Following the comma is the year of publication.
Since this is just an introduction to CMS, please refer to our bibliography video for more in-depth information on citing various other sources in the bibliography page of your writing.
Lesson Summary
In this video, you were introduced to CMS. We covered the basics of Chicago style, including how to use footnotes and an introduction to your CMS bibliography page.