Chicago Notes-Bibliography Citation Guide

Chicago Notes-Bibliography (NB) style is used primarily in history, arts, and humanities. Instead of parenthetical citations in the text, it uses numbered footnotes or endnotes, plus a final Bibliography. This guide shows you exactly how to write footnotes, handle ibid., and format your Bibliography entries.

Writing Footnotes

In Chicago NB, every cited source gets a superscript number in the text corresponding to a note at the bottom of the page (footnote) or end of the document (endnote). Notes are numbered consecutively throughout the paper.

First (full) note — Book

Format

First Name Last Name, Title of Book (Place: Publisher, Year), page.

Example

1. John Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (London: Sage, 2018), 45.

First note — Journal Article

2. James Omondi, "Digital Access in East African Universities," Journal of African Higher Education 14, no. 2 (2022): 47.

ibid. and Short-Title Subsequent References

When you cite the same source in consecutive notes, use ibid. (Latin: "in the same place"). When you return to a source cited earlier but not immediately before, use a short-title format.

ibid. (same source, next note)

3. Omondi, "Digital Access," 47.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 52.

Short title (returning to earlier source)

3. Creswell, Research Design, 45.
4. Omondi, "Digital Access," 47.
5. Creswell, Research Design, 89.

Ibid. is capitalised at the start of a note: Ibid. When followed by a different page number, add a comma: Ibid., 52.

Bibliography Formatting

The Bibliography appears at the end of the paper and lists all cited sources. The key difference from footnotes: author names are inverted (Last, First), and the formatting flips slightly.

Book in Bibliography

Creswell, John W. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 5th ed. London: Sage, 2018.

Journal Article in Bibliography

Omondi, James. "Digital Access and Literacy Gaps in East African Universities." Journal of African Higher Education 14, no. 2 (2022): 45–62.

Chapter in Edited Book

Footnote (first citation)

6. Alan Bryman, "Sampling in Qualitative Research," in SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Paul Atkinson et al. (London: Sage, 2021), 47.

Bibliography

Bryman, Alan. "Sampling in Qualitative Research." In SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Paul Atkinson et al., 45–62. London: Sage, 2021.

Website

Footnote

7. World Health Organization, "Mental Health Atlas 2022," WHO, January 15, 2023, https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240049338.

Bibliography

World Health Organization. "Mental Health Atlas 2022." WHO. January 15, 2023. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240049338.

Archival and Unpublished Sources

Chicago NB is well suited to archival research. Archival sources follow this pattern:

Footnote format

8. Letter from John Smith to Colonial Office, 14 March 1952, CO 533/456, The National Archives, London.

Bibliography format

Smith, John. Letter to Colonial Office. 14 March 1952. CO 533/456. The National Archives, London.

Key Rules

Include publisher location for books (unlike APA 7) — Chicago still requires it
Footnote numbers in text are superscript and come after punctuation: "...as argued by scholars.¹"
Bibliography is alphabetical by author last name; multiple works by same author use a 3-em dash (———) from the second entry onward
For online journal articles, include the DOI or URL after the page range

Need Help With Chicago Citations?

Our expert writers format Chicago NB footnotes and Bibliographies correctly for history and humanities papers.

Get Help Now

Chicago Notes-Bibliography Guide