Chicago on the Go: Handy Dandy Information

For those new to the Humanities, and those who have an interest in citation styles, this blog is for you.

The Chicago Manual of Style (which may be converted to CMS for short) does not have to give you PTSD. I know it can be terrifying. I too have grown anxious when contemplating if I should be using the Notes-Bibliography System (NB) for documentation or the Author-Date System (which does not have an accepted acronym, although I may call it AD anyway). There also exists the Turabian citation style, which uses both NB and AD. With all of these choices, how can a student ever know what is truly acceptable? Never fear. This post is a quick piece with, hopefully, interesting information. The EIU Writing Center, Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL), and the EIU History department (see links below) can all help those who need more in-depth information.

The Author-Date system brings up the authors in the text with the date following immediately in parenthesis. This is the form of CMS that most resembles APA and the Author-Date system is used when the dates of publication are very important to the research being done. The page number is included as well in text after quotations and also in parentheses. Much like APA, the Bibliography or Works Cited page is called References for AD style of citation within CMS. If you cannot work at least the last name of the author into the sentence, follow a quote with (AuthorLastName year published, page number). The Author-Date system does not have notes concerning sources, but may still have endnotes or footnotes that are actual notes that relate to the research instead of a bibliographic note.

NB is used most frequently in the humanities. Notes-Bibliography system uses a superscript number that corresponds to a footnote or endnote with the bibliographic information for every source. Concerning the Bibliography part of the NB, one must remember that sources are listed alphabetically by authors’ last names, just as in the list of References of APA or the Works Cited of MLA. The order goes: Lastname, First. Title (if it is the title of a book or journal, otherwise it is placed in quotation marks). Publisher (or Journal Name). Year of publication. It is interesting to note that in CMS the year of publication is, on the spectrum, closer to APA needs and desires than to MLA. In MLA the year is rarely important, and in APA the year is always important.

Listed above is the most straight forward formatting of a bibliography entry. Other formats can be seen at https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/03/ or https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/05/ .

Chicago Style can be complicated, but you are able to overcome. 

LINKS
The Writing Center http://castle.eiu.edu/~writing/
Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL) https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/01/
EIU History Department: http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfnek/citate.htm