Skip to Main Content

Anthropology 116 (DeLugan, Spring 2024)

Indigenous Activism in the Americas

About Chicago Style & Resources

Chicago style is usually used in the Humanities, History, and other fields. It includes several different versions for notes, bibliography entries, and shortened citations.

Key Characteristics

Big Picture

There are several versions of Chicago style, including Turabian style, which is a simplified version keyed toward students. Humanities disciplines frequently make use of the Notes and Bibliography system (NB), which allows writers to make footnotes and other commentary. Social sciences disciplines tend to use the Author-Date system.

  • For this class, you will be using the Author-Date system.
In-Text Citations

In the Author-Date system, citations are placed into parentheses in the text in this order: author last name year of publication, page number, and then fully cited in the References section.

  • Example: (Mueller 2014, 19)
  • Multiple authors may be listed, or acknowledged with et al.
  • Example: (Bennett, Sanders, and Lee 1998, 238)
  • Example: (Bennett et al. 1998, 238)

More Information:

Reference List...
  • Author-Date style references should be named "References."
  • Entries in a Reference list should be in alphabetical order by the first letter in the first word of each entry.
  • Write out names of first 3 authors.
  • First author's name is inverted.
  • If there are more than three but up to ten authors, write out the names of each author in the reference entry, but use First Author name et al. in the in-text citations.
  • Titles are headling style (title case); important words are capitalized and less important words are lower-case.
  • Larger works e.g. book or journal are italicized.
  • Smaller works e.g. book chapter, journal article are placed in "quotation marks".
  • Use DOIs instead of URLs, if possible.
  • Make DOIs active. See book examples from The Chicago Manual of Style Online. (VPN needed)

Basic Format for a Book in a Bibliography

Last name, First name. Title. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of Publication.

See examples at Author-date references - examples and variation (CMoS)

Basic Format for a Journal Article in a Bibliography

See Website and access dates in author-date format (CMoS) for an example. Access dates are not required for sources with a publication date.

Chicago Author-Date Citation Style (Video)

An excellent video explaining how to use Chicago Author Date Style. Note: The citation example in this video uses a non-active DO; however, Chicago Style encourages the use of an active DOI. See the DOI page on this guide.


Santiago Canyon College, created by Josh Vossler (4:29)