Chicago Referencing - What is it? And how to use it

Here is some background information about Chicago Referencing

Chicago referencing - The Chicago referencing style uses footnotes to indicate where a reference has come from. Unlike most other referencing styles, it is not necessary to include the name of the author and date in the main body of the text. The first time a source is referred to, full bibliographic details are provided in a footnote, followed by briefer references thereafter.

The first time a publication is cited it needs to be referenced fully in the footnotes with the page number that it is referring to. An example is shown below:

Burns describes how performing arts institutions have developed in the past five years. 1

The footnote entry would read: Burns, S., Performing Arts in Britain (London: Routledge, 2004), p.12.

Once a full reference to an item has been provided the first time, when it is subsequently referred to it is not necessary to give the full reference again in the footnotes. An abbreviated version of the title can be used in each subsequent footnote reference to this text including the page number. The Latin terms op.cit and ibid. can also be utilised in these subsequent footnotes to show that they have already been referred to. ‘op.cit.’ is used when the writer is referring to a text which has been referenced before, but not in the previous footnote. ‘Ibid’ (meaning in the place of) refers to a text which has been referenced in the immediately preceding footnote. This enables the researcher to use an abbreviated form of the document citation in subsequent references.

Here are some examples of how to use Chicago referencing

Jones, G., ‘Popular Music’, p.23.
Burns, S., Performing Arts, p.24.
Jones, G., op.cit., p.22.
Burns, S., op.cit., p.34.
Burns, S., ibid., p.22.

The Chicago Manual of Style uses both a reference page and a bibliography page. Each footnote or endnote is numbered. The bibliography is in alphabetical order and includes all resources used; not just those cited in the references.

A bibliography is arranged alphabetically by author. If an author cannot be located then the item should be listed alphabetically. If an author has more than one publication, the requirement is for publications to be listed chronologically with the earliest first.

The entry in the bibliography must incorporate the author’s surname, first name, title of document (underlined), followed by the place of publication, the name of publisher and date (all in brackets). Editors of books should have ed. or eds. after their name:

Bennett, Alan, Talking heads (London: Faber and Faber, 1985).

For multiple authors names should be written in alphabetical order unless there are more than three authors, in which case the first name should be followed by ‘et al’:

Brown, F. et al., Enterprise Management (London: Penguin Books, 1995).

Organisation names can be used to replace authors:

The Royal Ballet, A Survey of Ballet Audiences: annual report 1995. (London: The Royal Ballet, 1996).

Entries for chapters in books must include chapter authors surname, initials, title and subtitle of the article (in inverted commas), followed by ‘in’ and the author and name of the book (underlined). Then the place, publishers and date of publication need to be placed in brackets, followed by page numbers of the article:

Smith, I., ‘Theatres in performing arts schools’ in Jones, S.M. (ed.), Performing Arts Schools (London: Penguin Books, 1997), pp.345-369.

For Journals articles the order is author’s surname, initials, title and subtitle of article (in inverted commas), title of journal or newspaper (underlined), followed by volume number and date (in brackets), and page number of article:

Williams, J., ‘Mad cow disease epidemic’, Science Quarterly, 14 (Spring, 1998), 15 – 23.

Newspaper articles require only the date in brackets, followed by the page numbers:

Hutton, W., ‘Economics in Britain Today’, The Guardian (25th March 1998), 4 – 5.

For films and videos it is important to specify the medium after the title. The source would be written as Director’s last name, first name, with the word ‘dir’ enclosed in brackets, followed by title (underlined), the type of media (in brackets), publication place, publisher and date in brackets:

Spielberg, Stephen (dir.), ET (video recording) (London: Rank Video, 1983).

Television references are similar to film references except that the date the programme was shown is included instead of publication details and the channel name is also added:

Later with Jools Holland (video recording) (London: BBC2, 6th March 1997).

Recorded music is written in a similar format to book material except the format of the item is included in brackets after the title:

Bowie, D., Spiders from mars (audio recording on compact disc) (London: EMI, 1964).

Online databases include the author’s surname and initials, the title of the document (in inverted commas), the journal title (underlined), the media (online), the journal details, the word ‘available’, the name of the database (underlined), web page address and date of access (in brackets):

Roberts, S. ‘Performing Arts in Libraries’, Library Review (online) 50 (3, 2001) 230 – 256, available Web of Science http://www.wos.ac.uk (24th June 2004).

For internet sources, include the name of the author where possible, if not use the company name or organisation instead. The title should be underlined, followed by the media (online), the web page address and the date of access plus page numbers:

Jones, H., Music in education (online), available http://www.musiced.com (25th August 2004), 12 – 34.

If the writer wishes to source information sent via email, they must ask the senders permission first. An email would be written as follows;

Henderson, R., Information about modern dance (email), personal e-mail to Brown, J. (16th August 2004).

CD-Roms should be written as follows;

Smith, H., ‘Using computers in Performing Arts’ in The Times (CD-Rom) (3rd August 2003), The Times and Sunday Times CD-Rom edition (London: Chadwick-Healey, 2004).

When citing interviews the person who conducted the interview should be included, as well as who the interview was with, the media type (recorded interview), and the date:

Holmes, C., Interview with Morrissey (transcribed from audio recording) (7th August 2004).

This section has looked at the Chicago style of referencing; this uses footnotes to indicate where a source has originated from although unlike most other referencing styles it is not necessary to include the name of the author, date and page number in the body of the text. As with the Oxford style of referencing, it also utilises latin abbreviations ibid. and op.cit. and the footnotes are written in the same style as the bibliography with the exception of page numbers being added to the footnotes. As with MLA referencing, the dates are listed at the end but book titles, journal names and newspaper names are underlined rather than italicised.

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