Websites and social media

Chicago style has both an author-date system and a notes and bibliography system. This guide refers only to the notes and bibliography system.

There are two key components:

1. Footnotes or endnotes.
2. A bibliography.

For more information refer to Chicago Manual of Style (online) or you can borrow a copy from the library.

Before writing your list of references, check with your tutor or lecturer for the bibliographic style preferred by the School or Department.

Notes

A footnote or an endnote lists the author, title, and facts of publication, in that order. Elements are separated by commas and the facts of publication are enclosed in parentheses.

The notes are usually numbered and correspond to superscripted note reference numbers in the text.

Authors’ names are presented in standard order (first name first).

Titles are capitalised headline-style (all major words).
Titles of larger works (e.g., books and journals) are italicised.
Titles of smaller works (e.g., chapters, articles) or unpublished works are enclosed in quotation marks and not italicised.

Give full details in the first footnote and abbreviated version in subsequent footnotes. For example:

First footnote

1. Kristin Otto, Yarra: A Diverting History (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2009), 12.

Subsequent footnotes

7. Otto, Yarra, 23.

Bibliography

In a bibliography entry the elements are separated by periods rather than by commas and the facts of publication are not enclosed in parentheses.

The first-listed author’s name, according to which the entry is alphabetised in the bibliography, is inverted (last name first).

Where there are four or more authors the footnote should give the name of the first author only, followed by ‘et al.’ The bibliography entry should include the names of all the authors.

Titles are capitalised headline-style (all major words).
Titles of larger works (e.g., books, journals and websites) are italicised.
Titles of smaller works (e.g., chapters, articles and web pages) or unpublished works are enclosed in quotation marks and not italicised.

For books, specify the edition for all editions other than the first.

Do not include personal communications, such as letters or informal emails, in the bibliography. These should appear only in footnotes.

The bibliography can be divided into sections (e.g. primary and secondary sources).

The Chicago Manual of Style advises against citations taken from secondary sources (i.e. “quoted in”), but check with your lecturer or tutor if you are in doubt. For more information refer to Chicago Manual of Style (14.260) (login required).

Acceptable abbreviations in the bibliography for parts of books and other publications include:

Specific reference types

Books

• Specify the edition if it is not the first edition.
• In the bibliography, works without an author should appear alphabetically by the main word of the title (ignore ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘an’).
• No page numbers are given for books. Give beginning and ending page numbers for book chapters.
• Do not use ‘p’ or ‘pp’ before the page numbers.
• Editor's names should be followed with the abbreviation ed. (or eds.). Use the same format where there is a translator or compiler instead of an editor.
• For online books include the DOI (or URL) as the last part of the citation and refer to section headings in lieu of page numbers.
• Published musical scores are treated in the same way as books.

Journals

• Include both article title and subtitle, regardless of length.
• In the bibliography, give the start and end pages of the article. Do not use ‘p’ or ‘pp’ before the page numbers.
• In footnotes, cite specific pages (unless you are referring to the whole article).
• If a journal is paginated consecutively across a volume or if the month or season appears with the year, the issue number may be omitted.
• For online articles that have not been assigned a DOI include a URL. Note that DOI is lowercased and followed by a colon (with no space after) in source citations.
• Access dates are not required by Chicago in citations of formally published electronic sources (see Chicago Manual of Style, Ch.14.12).
• If an access date is required (by publisher or discipline) they should immediately precede the URL, separated from the surrounding citation by commas in a note and periods in a bibliography entry.

Newspapers

• If there is no article title, give the article type (not in quotation marks). For example: Obituary, Editorial.
• Omit ‘The’ from newspaper titles.
• Add a city name if the newspaper is not well known e.g. Examiner (Launceston).
• Page numbers are usually omitted.
• Details of the edition can be added to a note or bibliographical entry. For example: final edition, Midwest edition.
• If the paper is published in several sections, the section number or name may be given.
• To cite an article consulted online, include the URL.

Electronic sources

• A web page is any one of the “pages,” or subdocuments, that make up a website. A blog is a category of website that includes dated entries and dated comments. The title of a blog should be italicised; titles of blog entries (analogous to articles in a periodical) should be in quotation marks.
• Include the title of the web page, the title of the website (or a description), the author of the content and/or the owner (sponsor) of the site, and a URL.
• Include a publication date (or date of modification/revision). If no such date can be found, include an access date.
  Precede date of modification or access with 'last modified' and 'accessed' respectively.
• If a website refers to themselves by their domain name (which is case sensitive), shorten and capitalise it in a logical way (e.g., www.google.com becomes Google).
• Citations of website content are usually only included in the text and the notes, not in the bibliography.

Audio-visual

• Episodes and indexed scenes are treated like chapters.
• Sound recordings should be grouped under an appropriate subheading in the bibliography (see Chicago manual of style, chapter 14.263).

For more information

For more information and examples not covered here, refer to Chicago Manual of Style 17th ed. chapter 14 (login required).