Chicago Style Citation Generator
Footnotes, short notes and bibliography — or author-date — from a DOI, ISBN or web address. Chicago 18th edition, free.
Or pick a source type and type the details yourself.
Bibliography entry
Your citation appears here as you type.
Full note (first citation)
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Short note (later citations)
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In short
Paste a DOI, ISBN or URL and copy a Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed.) bibliography entry together with its full footnote and short note. You can also switch to author-date and get a reference-list entry with an (Author Year, page) citation. It covers journal articles, books, chapters and websites, keeps italics when pasted into Word or Google Docs, and saves your list only in your browser.
Chicago Style Citation rules at a glance
- Chicago has two systems. Notes and bibliography (common in history and the humanities) uses footnotes or endnotes plus a bibliography. Author-date (common in the sciences and social sciences) uses (Author Year, page) in the text plus a reference list.
- Notes: the first citation of a source is a full note (Matthew Desmond, Evicted (Crown, 2016), 95). Later citations are shortened notes — author, short title of up to four words, page — which the 18th edition prefers to “ibid.”
- In notes and in author-date text citations, name one or two authors. With three or more, give the first author followed by “et al.”
- Bibliography and reference-list entries are alphabetical. The first author's name is inverted. List up to six authors; with more than six, list the first three followed by “et al.”
- Place of publication is no longer required for books (18th ed.), so book entries end with Publisher, Year.
- Journal articles: “Article Title.” Journal volume, no. issue (Year): pages. A month or season can usually be left out when there are volume and issue numbers. Include the DOI as a link.
- The page range of a chapter in an edited book is no longer required in the bibliography, but a note still gives the page cited.
- Web pages give the title, the site name and the publication or revision date. If there is no date, give the date you accessed the page. Titles use headline-style capitalization.
Summarized from The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (University of Chicago Press, 2024), and library guides to its changes.
Examples
Real sources, formatted by this generator (page 12 shown in the in-text citations):
Journal article, one author
Desmond, Matthew. “Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty.” American Journal of Sociology 118, no. 1 (2012): 88–133. https://doi.org/10.1086/666082.
Full note (first citation) (page 12): Matthew Desmond, “Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty,” American Journal of Sociology 118, no. 1 (2012): 12, https://doi.org/10.1086/666082.
Short note (later citations) (page 12): Desmond, “Eviction and the Reproduction,” 12.
Journal article, three authors
Marucho, M., C. T. Kelley, and B. Montgomery Pettitt. “Solutions of the Optimized Closure Integral Equation Theory: Heteronuclear Polyatomic Fluids.” Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 4, no. 3 (2008): 385–396. https://doi.org/10.1021/ct700202h.
Full note (first citation) (page 12): M. Marucho et al., “Solutions of the Optimized Closure Integral Equation Theory: Heteronuclear Polyatomic Fluids,” Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 4, no. 3 (2008): 12, https://doi.org/10.1021/ct700202h.
Short note (later citations) (page 12): Marucho et al., “Solutions of the Optimized,” 12.
Book
Desmond, Matthew. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Crown, 2016.
Full note (first citation) (page 12): Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown, 2016), 12.
Short note (later citations) (page 12): Desmond, Evicted, 12.
Book, three authors, later edition
Atkins, Peter, Julio de Paula, and James Keeler. Atkins' Physical Chemistry. 11th ed. Oxford University Press, 2018.
Full note (first citation) (page 12): Peter Atkins et al., Atkins' Physical Chemistry, 11th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2018), 12.
Short note (later citations) (page 12): Atkins et al., Atkins' Physical Chemistry, 12.
Chapter in an edited book
Gray, Robin R. R. “Repatriation and Decolonization.” In The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation, edited by Frank Gunderson, Robert C. Lancefield, and Bret Woods. Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190659806.013.39.
Full note (first citation) (page 12): Robin R. R. Gray, “Repatriation and Decolonization,” in The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation, ed. Frank Gunderson, Robert C. Lancefield, and Bret Woods (Oxford University Press, 2018), 12, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190659806.013.39.
Short note (later citations) (page 12): Gray, “Repatriation and Decolonization,” 12.
Web page by an organization, no date
United Nations. “What Is Climate Change?” United Nations. Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change.
Full note (first citation) (page 12): United Nations, “What Is Climate Change?” United Nations, accessed October 12, 2026, https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change.
Short note (later citations) (page 12): United Nations, “What Is Climate Change?” 12.
The same sources in author-date style:
Journal article, one author
Desmond, Matthew. 2012. “Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty.” American Journal of Sociology 118 (1): 88–133. https://doi.org/10.1086/666082.
In-text citation (page 12): (Desmond 2012, 12)
Journal article, three authors
Marucho, M., C. T. Kelley, and B. Montgomery Pettitt. 2008. “Solutions of the Optimized Closure Integral Equation Theory: Heteronuclear Polyatomic Fluids.” Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 4 (3): 385–396. https://doi.org/10.1021/ct700202h.
In-text citation (page 12): (Marucho et al. 2008, 12)
Book
Desmond, Matthew. 2016. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Crown.
In-text citation (page 12): (Desmond 2016, 12)
How to use it
- Paste a DOI, an ISBN or the page address and press Cite — or choose the source type and type the details.
- Check every field against the source. Metadata databases are not always complete, so fix names, capitalization and pages here.
- Copy the reference and the in-text citation, or add the source to your list and copy the whole list at the end.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between notes-bibliography and author-date?
Notes-bibliography puts citations in numbered footnotes or endnotes and lists sources in a bibliography. Author-date puts short (Author Year, page) citations in the text and lists sources in a reference list where the year comes right after the author. Use the one your instructor or journal asks for; the generator does both.
What changed in the 18th edition of Chicago?
Among the changes: place of publication is no longer needed for books; bibliographies list up to six authors (more than six become three plus “et al.”); notes use “et al.” for three or more authors; short notes are preferred over “ibid.”; and chapter page ranges are optional in the bibliography.
How do I write a Chicago short note?
Give the author's last name, a short title of up to four words (italic for books, in quotation marks for articles and chapters) and the page: Desmond, Evicted, 95. The generator builds it for you next to the full note.
Do websites need an access date in Chicago?
Only when the page has no publication or revision date. Then add “Accessed Month Day, Year.” before the URL.
Is my data stored?
No. DOIs and ISBNs are looked up directly from Crossref and Open Library in your browser. A web address is read once by our server to get the page title and author. Your list is saved only in your browser.
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