Turabian citation guide: format, footnotes, and examples

Turabian and Chicago: the relationship students keep asking about

Kate L. Turabian (1893–1987) was the graduate school dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1958. In 1937 she wrote a short pamphlet describing the citation style the university required in dissertations; the University of Chicago Press began distributing it in 1947 and published it as a book in 1955. Her Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations has been maintained by Press staff ever since, and the Press’s own history of the manual says the two books share the same Chicago-style citation formats.

So the practical answer is simple:

• A citation formatted in Chicago is formatted in Turabian. Same punctuation, same element order, same italics.
• The difference is the wrapper.Turabian adds student-facing paper format — title page, margins, spacing, headings — and drops the publishing-industry material.
• Both books offer the same two citation systems. Notes-bibliography and author-date. Turabian did not invent a third one.

When a syllabus says "Turabian," it almost always means Chicago citations plus Turabian paper format. If your instructor has not said which system, ask before you write a single footnote.

Notes-bibliography vs author-date: which one do you need?

This is the fork in the road. The two systems are not interchangeable, and mixing them is the fastest way to lose formatting marks.

• Notes-bibliographyis popular in the humanities — literature, history, and the arts. Sources are cited in numbered footnotes or endnotes and usually also listed in a bibliography. Turabian covers it in chapters 16 and 17.
• Author-date is more common in the physical, natural, and social sciences. Sources are cited briefly in the text in parentheses by author surname and year, and each citation matches an entry in a reference list. Turabian covers it in chapters 18 and 19.

How to decide, in order of authority:

• The assignment brief or department style sheet, if one exists.
• Your instructor, if the brief is silent. Ask in writing.
• Discipline convention as a last resort: history and theology papers usually mean notes-bibliography; a social-science methods paper usually means author-date.

Once you pick, commit. One paper, one system, one reference list heading ("Bibliography" for notes-bibliography, "References" for author-date).

Turabian notes-bibliography examples

Every source below appears in three forms, because that is what a real paper needs: the full note the first time you cite it, the shortened note every time after that, and the bibliography entry at the end. The element order and punctuation follow the official Turabian notes-bibliography quick guide. The sample sources are illustrative — copy the shape, not the titles.

Notice the three differences between a note and a bibliography entry: the note starts with a number and a period, keeps the author in normal order, wraps the publication details in parentheses, and ends with the exact page you used. The bibliography entry inverts the author name, uses periods instead of parentheses, and gives no page number for a whole book.

Only the first author is inverted in the bibliography. For four or more authors, the note lists the first author followed by et al., while the bibliography lists up to ten; if there are more than ten, the bibliography lists the first seven followed by et al.

The note abbreviates the editor to ed. and cites the one page you used. The bibliography spells out edited by and gives the full page range of the chapter.

Prefer a DOI when the article has one; use the journal’s stable URL only if there is no DOI. In the note the DOI is preceded by a comma; in the bibliography it follows a period.

Use a publication or last-modified date when the page shows one. Only when a source lists no date of publication, posting, or revision do you fall back to an access date. A shortened note for a web page usually drops the page number entirely, because there is nothing to point to.

Turabian author-date examples

Author-date uses the same raw ingredients in a different order: the year jumps to the front, quotation marks and italics stay the same, and the list at the end is titled References. These follow the official Turabian author-date quick guide.

Two small traps. First, the month or season sits inside the parentheses with the issue number and the year is not repeated there. Second, the in-text citation separates year and page with a comma and no p. With three authors you name all three in the text, for example (Keng, Lin, and Orazem 2017, 9); with four or more, name the first author followed by et al.

If you need author-date entries built for you, the free Chicago citation generator produces exactly this format — paste a DOI, ISBN, or link and it fills in the fields. It builds reference-list entries only, not footnotes, so notes-bibliography writers still have to rearrange the elements by hand using the patterns above.

In-text and inline citations: what Turabian actually expects

"In-text citation" means two different things depending on your system, which is why the question causes so much confusion.

• Notes-bibliography. There is no parenthetical citation in the sentence. The in-text element is a superscript number that sends the reader to the note.
• Author-date. The citation is inline and parenthetical: (Author Year, page). Nothing goes in a footnote.

Rules for the superscript number in notes-bibliography:

• Put it at the end of the clause or sentence it supports, not immediately after the author’s name.
• Place it after all punctuation, including a closing quotation mark, with no space. The one exception is the dash, which the number precedes.
• Number notes consecutively through the paper: 1, 2, 3.
• Use a full note the first time you cite a source and a shortened note afterwards.

On Ibid.: Turabian 16.4.2 states that unless your local guidelines require it, you may use one of the shortened forms instead to refer to an immediately preceding note. Many departments now prefer the shortened note. Check your style sheet rather than assuming.

How to format the notes and the bibliography

Word and Google Docs will insert notes for you, but their defaults are not Turabian defaults. What the manual and university writing guides call for:

• Notes: single-spaced, with a blank line between notes, and the first line of each note indented like a paragraph (commonly half an inch).
• Note numbers: a full-size number followed by a period in the note itself, even though the marker in the text is superscript.
• Bibliography: starts on a new page, headed Bibliography, alphabetized by the author’s last name (or the organization name), single-spaced with a blank line between entries, and set with a hanging indent so the first line is flush left and later lines are indented.
• Reference list (author-date): same layout, but headed References and with the year immediately after the author.

Footnotes and endnotes are equally acceptable in Turabian; footnotes are friendlier to readers, endnotes are friendlier to page layout. Whichever you choose, do not switch halfway.

The Turabian cover page (title page)

Turabian papers normally open with a title page rather than a header block. For most class papers this is the only front matter you need.

• Title placement: about one-third of the way down the page, usually centered.
• Subtitles: end the main title with a colon, then start the subtitle on a new line with a blank line between them.
• Everything else:several lines below the title, add your name plus whatever your instructor requires — commonly the course department and number, the instructor’s name, and the date.
• Page number: the title page is counted but the number is not printed on it. Arabic numbering starts on the first page of the text, placed consistently in the header or footer.
• Capitalization: headline-style capitalization for the title, in the same readable font as the rest of the paper.

One caveat worth repeating: your instructor’s requirements override the manual. If the brief asks for a student ID or a word count on the title page, put it there.

Turabian paper format in one list

• Margins of one inch on all four sides.
• A readable 12-point font such as Times New Roman; university guides treat 10-point as the floor.
• Double-spaced body text, with paragraphs indented half an inch.
• Block quotations for prose running five or more lines: single-spaced, indented, and without quotation marks.
• Single spacing for notes, bibliography, and reference entries, with a blank line between items.
• Page numbers in a consistent position throughout, starting on the first page of text.

Six Turabian mistakes that cost easy marks

• Mixing the two systems. Footnotes in chapter one and parenthetical citations in chapter two is the single most common error. Choose one system before you draft.
• Pasting reference-list entries into footnotes. Bibliography and note formats are different: inverted name and periods versus normal name order and parentheses. A generator’s reference entry is not a footnote.
• Putting the superscript number mid-sentence after the author’s name. It belongs at the end of the clause or sentence, after the punctuation.
• Repeating the full citation every time. After the first full note, shorten to last name, short title, page.
• A bibliography with no hanging indent. Flush-left wrapped lines make entries unreadable and look careless in a plagiarism review.
• Numbering the title page. It is counted, not printed.

Where a generator helps, and where it does not

A generator is good at the mechanical part — getting commas, italics, and element order right — and bad at judgement calls like which system your course wants or whether a source has an editor. Use it for the entries, then check the output against the patterns above.

• Chicago citation generator — builds Turabian author-date reference entries for books, journal articles, and websites.
• Citation generator— the same tool with APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard side by side, which is useful when different courses want different styles.
• Annotated bibliography format and examples — if your bibliography needs a summary paragraph under each entry, the Chicago panel there shows the layout with a copyable example.

One last thing to know before you submit. Reference lists and bibliographies match other papers by design, so they often show up as highlighted text in a plagiarism check. That is normal and usually harmless, but it is worth understanding before you panic at a percentage — see how to read a Turnitin Similarity Report and, if you want to look before the deadline, how to check your Turnitin score before submitting.

Frequently asked questions