Free Chicago Citation Generator

What Is a Chicago Citation Generator?

A Chicago citation generator is a free online tool that turns the details of a source into a properly formatted Chicago citation. The tool applies the rules of the Chicago citation style for you: the order of the details, the punctuation, the italics, and the capitalization of titles. It works as a footnote and bibliography generator for notes-bibliography papers and as a reference generator for author-date papers. Some writers call it a Chicago citation maker or a Chicago style citation generator.

The generator has 4 parts: a search box that fills in a source’s metadata, an input form, a result panel, and a bibliography builder. College students and university students use it for research papers, theses, and dissertations, most often in history, business, and the fine arts. Researchers, editors, and writers use a citation generator to check articles and books that follow Chicago style.

What Is a Chicago Style Citation?

A Chicago style citation is a reference that credits a source by following the rules of the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), the style guide the University of Chicago Press has published since 1906. Each citation tells the reader who wrote the source, what it is called, who published it, and when it appeared, so the reader can find the same source.

Chicago style has 2 citation systems, notes-bibliography (NB) and author-date (AD):

Parts of a Chicago Citation

A Chicago citation has 5 core parts: the author, the title, the publication details, the date, and the location, which is a page number, DOI, or URL. The color-coded book citation below shows each part in a footnote, a bibliography entry, and an author-date reference.

The order changes between systems. A footnote lists the author’s first name first and puts the publisher and year in parentheses. A bibliography entry flips the first author’s name to last name first and separates each part with a period. An author-date reference moves the year straight after the author.

Chicago Style vs. APA, MLA, and Harvard

Chicago referencing differs from APA, MLA, and Harvard in 2 main ways: it offers footnotes as a full citation system, and its author-date form drops the comma and the “p.” before the page. The table compares how each style cites page 51 of an article by Maria Lopez from 2018.

How to Use Our Chicago Citation Generator

To use the Chicago citation generator, follow these 6 steps at the top of the page:

1. 1
   Choose notes-bibliography or author-date

   Pick the citation system your assignment or journal asks for. Notes and Bibliography is selected by default.

2. 2
   Choose the edition

   Keep the 18th edition (2024) in the Edition menu, or switch to the 17th edition (2017) when your instructor asks for it. The 17th edition adds a place of publication field.

3. 3
   Pick the source type

   Website, Book, Journal, and Video have their own tabs. Open More for the other 40 source types, and type in its search box to find one fast.

4. 4
   Search for the source

   Type a book or article title and pick your source from the results, or paste a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), International Standard Book Number (ISBN), arXiv ID, PubMed ID (PMID), or YouTube link and press Cite. The form fills from Crossref, DataCite, PubMed, Open Library, or the video page. Paste any other web address and the tool reads the title, author, site name, and date that the page states. A few sites block this, and then only the link is added. Press Or enter the details manually to skip the search.

5. 5
   Review the details

   Check the author names, the title, and the page you cited. The result panel updates as you type. Add a short title, if the automatic one cuts off a key word.

6. 6
   Copy the citation or build your list

   Press Copy to paste the note or entry into Microsoft Word or Google Docs with its italics intact. Press Add to bibliography to build an alphabetical list, then Copy all.

Source Types the Generator Covers

The generator covers 44 source types in 8 groups:

Use this online citation generator to generate citations for one paper at a time; it does not export BibTeX files. Reference managers such as Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote store long-term source libraries and export BibTeX for LaTeX.

How to Cite Sources in Chicago Style

To cite a source in Chicago style, mark the sentence that uses the source, then give the source’s full details in a note, a bibliography, or a reference list. Put a note number after the closing punctuation, except a dash, and put an author-date citation before the closing punctuation. The container is the larger work that holds a source, such as the journal for an article or the website for a page.

Chicago Citation Templates by Source Type

Chicago citation templates show where each detail goes in Chicago format for the 8 most cited source types. The templates follow the 18th edition notes-bibliography system.

For the author-date system, move the year after the author in the reference list entry, as in Last, First. Year. Title. Publisher. The matching in-text citation is (Last Year, page).

Citing Government, Institutional, and Organizational Reports

Cite a government report, institutional report, or organizational report with the issuing body as the author, when no person is named on the report. Write the body’s full name, such as World Health Organization, and type it into the Last name field of the generator. The publisher can be a shorter form of the same body, such as WHO.

Citing Sources With No Author or No Date

Start the citation with the title, when a source lists no author. For a website, the site owner can stand in as the author, so the generator moves an owner or publisher into the author position. Write “n.d.” (no date) in place of the year, when a source shows no date, and add the date you accessed it.

Sources Chicago Cites in Notes Only

Chicago cites 5 kinds of sources in a note or in the running text and leaves them out of the bibliography or reference list. A reader cannot look these sources up the usual way, or a short note already identifies them in full. The generator shows a short reminder under the citation for each of them.

Social media posts follow a softer version of the same rule. Cite a post in a note or in the text, and add a bibliography entry only for a post you cite often.

Chicago Citation Examples

Chicago citation examples show the same source in both citation systems. The 12 examples below come from the generator on this page and follow the 18th edition. Each one lists a first footnote, a later short note, a bibliography entry, an author-date reference, and an in-text citation, except where Chicago cites a source in notes only.

Chicago Footnotes, Endnotes, and Bibliographies Explained

Footnotes and endnotes are numbered notes that cite a source, and a bibliography is the alphabetical list of every source at the end of the paper. A superscript number in the text links each sentence to its note. The page below shows 3 notes on one page and the bibliography page that closes the same paper.

Footnotes vs. Endnotes

Footnotes and endnotes differ in one way: footnotes sit at the bottom of the page, and endnotes sit together at the end of the paper or chapter. A footnote citation and an endnote citation share one citation format.

Microsoft Word and Google Docs both number footnotes for you. In Word, use References > Insert Footnote, and in Google Docs, use Insert > Footnote. Paste the note from the citation tool into the empty footnote, and the word processor supplies the number.

Full Notes and Short Notes

A full note gives every detail of a source the first time you cite it. Each later citation of the same source uses a short note: the author’s last name, a short title of up to 4 words, and the page.

• Full note: 1. Kathleen Doyle, “The Queen Mary Psalter,” in The Book by Design: The Remarkable Story of the World's Greatest Invention, ed. P. J. M. Marks and Stephen Parkin (University of Chicago Press, 2023), 64.
• Short note: 2. Doyle, “Queen Mary Psalter,” 65.

Chicago discourages “ibid.” in both the 17th and 18th editions and prefers the short note, even for the same source cited twice in a row.

How to Format a Chicago Bibliography

To format a Chicago bibliography, follow these 5 rules:

1. Start a new page titled “Bibliography” at the end of the paper.
2. Alphabetize the entries by the first author’s last name, or by the title, when there is no author.
3. Indent every line after the first by 0.5 inch (1.27 cm), which is called a hanging indent.
4. Single-space each entry and leave a blank line between entries, unless your instructor asks for double spacing throughout.
5. Title the list “References” in place of “Bibliography” when the paper uses the author-date system.

Chicago Edition Citation Guidelines

Chicago citation guidelines differ between the 17th edition (2017) and the 18th edition (2024) in 4 rules that change how a citation looks. Courses and journals that have not moved to the 18th edition still ask for the Chicago 17th edition, so the generator offers both.

What Changed in the 18th Edition

The 4 rules that changed are these:

Which Chicago Edition Should You Use?

Use the 18th edition, unless your instructor, journal, or publisher names the 17th edition. Students writing to Turabian’s A Manual for Writers use 17th edition rules, since the current 9th edition of Turabian (2018) is based on the Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition. The Turabian citation generator on our homepage formats those papers.

Older editions, such as the 16th edition (2010) and the 15th edition (2003), are out of date. The 16th edition formatted author-date journal entries differently from the “12, no. 2” pattern the 17th and 18th editions use. Update citations from an older template to the 18th edition before you submit a paper.

Common Chicago Citation Mistakes to Avoid

There are 6 common Chicago citation mistakes, from mixing the two citation systems to using sentence case for titles. Each mistake below shows a wrong version and the corrected version.

1. 1Mixing notes-bibliography and author-date in one paper

   Wrong(Lopez 2018, 51) in one paragraph and a footnote in the next

   RightOne system for the whole paper: footnotes throughout, or parenthetical citations throughout

2. 2Inverting the author's name in a footnote

   Wrong1. Lopez, Maria, “Archival Methods in Practice,” Journal of History 12, no. 2 (2018): 51, https://journal.example.org/archival-methods.

   Right1. Maria Lopez, “Archival Methods in Practice,” Journal of History 12, no. 2 (2018): 51, https://journal.example.org/archival-methods.

3. 3Using APA punctuation in an author-date reference

   WrongLopez, M. (2018). Archival methods in practice. Journal of History, 12(2), 45–67.

   RightLopez, Maria. 2018. “Archival Methods in Practice.” Journal of History 12, no. 2: 45–67. https://journal.example.org/archival-methods.

4. 4Putting the comma outside the quotation marks

   Wrong“Archival Methods in Practice”, Journal of History

   Right“Archival Methods in Practice,” Journal of History

5. 5Using a hyphen in page ranges

   WrongJournal of History 12, no. 2 (2018): 45-67.

   RightJournal of History 12, no. 2 (2018): 45–67. (an en dash)

6. 6Writing titles in sentence case

   WrongFundamentals of physics

   RightFundamentals of Physics (headline-style capitalization)

Why Use Our Chicago Citation Generator?

Our Chicago citation generator is a free citation generator with 3 benefits for academic writing: output tested against Chicago’s own examples, no invented details, and no account.

A Chicago citation generator saves time on every academic paper and returns a properly formatted Chicago citation in both the author-date and notes-bibliography systems. Check each automatic citation against the source before you submit, since a record can carry a misspelled name or a missing page.