Is "Ibid." Still Used in Turabian?

Short answer: Turabian 9th edition (which follows Chicago 17th) discourages “ibid.” and prefers a shortened note instead. It is not forbidden, though, and some instructors still accept it, so the safe move is to use a shortened note and only reach for “ibid.” if your instructor asks for it. If you would rather skip the guesswork, build the footnote with our Turabian generator and paste the result straight into your paper.

The rest of this page shows what “ibid.” means, why the 9th edition moved away from it, and the exact rules for both formats so you never lose a mark over a repeat citation.

What “ibid.” actually means

“Ibid.” is short for the Latin word ibidem, meaning “in the same place.” Writers used it in a footnote to say “same source as the note right above this one,” which saved re-typing the author and title.

It still shows up in older books, journals, and style sheets, so you have almost certainly seen it. The question is not whether it exists but whether the current edition of Turabian wants you to use it.

You will also see it written a few different ways in the wild: “Ibid.,” “ibid.,” and the old italic Ibid. In current Turabian style the correct form is plain roman type, capitalized at the start of a note, with the period kept because it is an abbreviation of a longer word.

Ibid. in Turabian: what changed in the 9th edition

Turabian 9th edition (2018), based on Chicago 17th, tells writers to prefer a shortened note over “ibid.” The reason is readability. When a source gets cited five times in a row, you end up with a column of notes that all read “Ibid.” and a reader who has scrolled past the first note has no idea what source those refer to.

A shortened note fixes that. It repeats the author’s last name and a short title, so any single note makes sense on its own, even if the reader jumps into the middle of your notes. That small repeat is the whole point.

There is a practical reason too. Papers get edited. If you move a paragraph, or your instructor asks you to add a source between two others, every “ibid.” near that spot can quietly break, because it now points at a different note than it did before. Shortened notes do not have that problem: each one names its own source, so shuffling paragraphs never scrambles your citations. For a long paper with heavy revision, that stability alone is worth the switch.

The recommended replacement: shortened notes, side by side

Here is a real run of notes. The first citation is always a full note. After that, repeat citations use a shortened note built from the author’s last name, a short title, and the page.

Full note (first time you cite the source):

1. Eleanor Hart, The Reforming Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 52.

Now say you cite the same book again on the very next note, this time page 61. Compare the two ways to write it.

With “ibid.” (older / optional form):

2. Ibid., 61.

With a shortened note (recommended in the 9th edition):

2. Hart, Reforming Century, 61.

Both point to Hart’s book, page 61. The shortened note just names the source out loud. For a full walkthrough of how the short form is built, see our guide to the Turabian shortened footnote.

Try it: build a Turabian footnote automatically instead of formatting it by hand. The generator gives you the full note and the shortened note together.

The pattern holds across source types. Titles that keep italics stay italic; article and web page titles stay in quotation marks.

Journal article, full then shortened:

1. Susan Blackwood, “Reading the Margins,” Journal of Medieval History 42, no. 3 (2016): 210.

2. Blackwood, “Reading the Margins,” 213.

Web page, full then shortened:

1. Maria Torres, “Preserving Colonial Archives,” National History Center, March 3, 2019, https://www.example.org/colonial-archives.

2. Torres, “Preserving Colonial Archives.”

Notice the web page shortened note carries no page number, because web pages usually have none. You still name the author and short title.

Shortened notes for other source types

Repeat citations are not just for single-author books. Here are the shortened forms for the source types students cite most, each shown full first, then shortened, so you can copy the exact line you need.

Chapter in an edited book:

1. Daniel Okoro, “Trade Routes of the Sahel,” in Empires of the Desert, ed. Priya Nair (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 143.

2. Okoro, “Trade Routes of the Sahel,” 147.

The shortened note drops the editor and the publication facts and keeps the chapter title in quotation marks. The book title does not reappear in the short form.

Book with two authors:

1. Eleanor Hart and James Cole, The Reforming Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 88.

2. Hart and Cole, Reforming Century, 90.

Both last names stay in the shortened note, joined by “and.” For three authors, list all three last names. For four or more authors, use the first author’s last name plus “et al.” both in the full note and in the short form.

Four or more authors, full note:

1. Priya Nair et al., Coastal Economies (Boston: Harbor Press, 2020), 30.

Its shortened note would read Nair et al., Coastal Economies, 30. Whatever the source, the short form answers one question for the reader: which author, which work, which page. That is exactly the information “ibid.” hides.

Shortening the title correctly

The short title is where students slip up, so keep two rules in mind. Drop the opening article (“The” or “A”), and drop any subtitle after the colon.

So The Reforming Century: Faith and Politics in Early America becomes Reforming Century in every shortened note. Keep enough of the title to identify the work on its own, though. If your author wrote two books with similar names, keep the words that tell them apart rather than trimming to the shortest possible phrase.

The rules if your instructor does want “ibid.”

Some instructors, especially in history and theology, still like “ibid.” If yours does, use it carefully. These are the rules from Turabian 9th edition for the older form.

• Use “ibid.” only when the note directly above it cites a single source.
• Add a page number if the page is different: Ibid., 45.
• Use “ibid.” alone if the page is exactly the same as the note above: Ibid.
• Capitalize it and end with a period, because it is an abbreviation. Do not italicize it in current Turabian style.

Worked out, a run of same-source notes looks like this:

1. Eleanor Hart, The Reforming Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 52.

2. Ibid., 61.

3. Ibid., 77.

Note 2 means “Hart’s book, page 61.” Note 3 means “Hart’s book, page 77.” If note 3 were also on page 61, you would simply write Ibid. with nothing after it.

When you cannot use “ibid.”

“Ibid.” only ever reaches back one note, to a single source. It stops working in two common spots.

Situation	Can you use “ibid.”?	Use instead
The note right above cites one source, same book, new page	Yes: Ibid., 45.	Nothing needed
The note right above cites one source, same book, same page	Yes: Ibid.	Nothing needed
The note right above cited two or more sources	No	Shortened note naming the source you mean
The source is two or more notes back	No	Shortened note
It is the first time you cite the source	No	Full note

That middle row is where most errors happen. If note 4 lists two books and note 5 is “ibid.,” a reader cannot tell which of the two books you mean, so Turabian does not allow it there.

How to check what your department expects

Instructor preference beats any blog post, including this one. Before you commit to one style for a whole paper, do two quick checks.

First, read the assignment sheet or department style guide for the word “ibid.” Many history and theology departments state their preference in writing. Second, if it is silent, email your instructor one line: do you want shortened notes or “ibid.” for repeat citations? Pick one and stay consistent for the entire paper.

If you are working from a graded sample, a returned essay, or a supervisor’s own published work, copy the format they use. An instructor who marks in “ibid.” by hand is telling you what they expect. When nothing points either way, default to shortened notes, since that is what the 9th edition recommends and no reasonable grader will penalize the current standard.

When you want the official wording, the Turabian notes and bibliography quick guide from the University of Chicago sets out the shortened-note form the 9th edition prefers.

Where ibid. trips students up

A few errors cost easy marks. Watch for these.

• Using “ibid.” after a multi-source note. If the previous note cited more than one work, “ibid.” is ambiguous and not allowed. Write a shortened note naming the specific source.
• Using “ibid.” to point two notes back. It only refers to the note immediately above it. If another source sits between them, “ibid.” now points at the wrong book. Use a shortened note.
• Forgetting the page number. Ibid. alone means the same page as the note above. If your new citation is on a different page, you must write Ibid., 45. Leaving the page off silently changes your citation.
• Mixing both systems. Do not use “ibid.” in one chapter and shortened notes in another. Choose one and keep it the same throughout.
• Putting “ibid.” in the bibliography. “Ibid.” belongs only in notes. Your bibliography lists each source once, in full, alphabetized by the author’s last name, so it never shows “ibid.” at all.
• Reaching for “op. cit.” or “loc. cit.” These older Latin tags are obsolete in Turabian. If you were taught them, replace them with a plain shortened note. The 9th edition does not use them.

Ibid. questions, answered

Is “ibid.” still used in Turabian 9th edition? It is allowed but discouraged. Turabian 9th edition prefers a shortened note. Use “ibid.” only if your instructor asks for it, and follow the single-source, immediately-preceding rule.

Is “ibid.” banned in Turabian? No. It is not forbidden. The 9th edition simply recommends the shortened note as the clearer default, and many instructors accept either form.

What replaces “ibid.” in Turabian? A shortened note: the author’s last name, a short version of the title, and the page number, such as Hart, *Reforming Century*, 61.

Do I italicize “ibid.”? No. In current Turabian style “ibid.” is set in regular (roman) type, capitalized at the start of a note, and followed by a period.

Can I write “Ibid.” with no page number? Yes, but only when the page is identical to the note directly above it. If the page changes, add it: Ibid., 45.

Which form should you use?

Treat the shortened note as your default for repeat citations in Turabian 9th edition, and keep “ibid.” in reserve for instructors who specifically want it. Either way the pattern is small and predictable once you have seen it a few times. For the bigger picture on how notes work, start with our guide to Turabian footnotes, and when you would rather not format anything by hand, let the Turabian citation generator build your full and shortened notes for you.