The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) covers various topics from manuscript preparation and publication to grammar, usage, and documentation, and as such, it has been lovingly dubbed the “editor's bible."
The"material on this page focuses primarily on one of the two CMOS documentation styles: the Notes-Bibliography System (NB), used by those in literature, history, and the arts. The other documentation style, the Author-Date System, is nearly identical in content but slightly different in form and is preferred by social science workers.
Though the two systems both convey all of the critical information about each source, they differ not only in terms of the way they direct readers to these sources and their formatting (e.g., the position of dates in citation entries) (Text adapted from OWL Purdue).
Notes/Bibliography style is used widely in literature, history, and the arts. This style presents bibliographic information in footnotes or endnotes and, usually, a bibliography.
|
Material |
Note |
Bibliographic Entry |
|
Books in print |
1. Wendy Doniger, Splitting the Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 65. |
Doniger, Wendy. Splitting the Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. |
|
An article in a print journal |
8. John Maynard Smith, “The Origin of Altruism,” Nature 393 (1998): 639. |
Smith, John Maynard. “The Origin of Altruism.” Nature 393 (1998): 639–40. |
|
An article in an electronic journal |
33. Campbell Brown. "Consequentialize This," Ethics 121, no. 4 (July 2011): 751, http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/660696. |
Brown, Campbell. "Consequentialize This." Ethics 121, no. 4 (July 2011): 749-71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/660696. |
|
A website |
11. "Privacy Policy,” Privacy & Terms, Google, last modified April 17, 2017, https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/. |
Google. “Privacy Policy.” Privacy & Terms. Last modified April 17, 2017. https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/. |
Author-date style has long been used in the physical, natural, and social sciences. In this system, sources are briefly cited in parentheses in the text by author's last name and date of publication. The parenthetical citations are amplified in a list of references, where complete bibliographic information is provided.
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Material |
Parenthetical Citation |
Reference List |
|
Books in print |
(Doniger 1999, 65) |
Doniger, Wendy. 1999. Splitting the Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. |
|
An article in a print journal |
(Smith 1998, 639) |
Smith, John Maynard. 1998. "The Origin of Altruism." Nature 393: 639–40. |
|
An article in an electronic journal |
(Kiser 2011, 340) |
Kiser, Lisa J. 2011. "Silencing the Lambs: Economics, Ethics, and Animal Life in Medieval Franciscan Hagiography." Modern Philology 108, no. 3 (February): 323-42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/658052. |
|
A website |
(Google 2017) |
Google. 2017. "Privacy Policy." Privacy & Terms. Last modified April 17, 2017. https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/. |