Chicago Citation Generator (18th Edition)
Chicago 18 notes, bibliography and author-date citations, with a Turabian mode.
Autofill from a DOI, ISBN or web address
Source details
Your citation
Fill in the details or use autofill — the citation appears here as you type.
Bibliography
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In the text:
About the Chicago Citation Generator (18th Edition)
Create citations in both Chicago systems from The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (2024). Notes and bibliography, common in history, literature and the arts, gives you the full footnote for the first citation, the short note for later ones and the bibliography entry. Author-date, used in the sciences and social sciences, gives the reference-list entry and the parenthetical citation. It covers journal articles, books, chapters, news, magazine and blog articles, web pages, theses, reports, videos and films, data sets and software.
Paste a DOI, ISBN or web address to fill in the form, or type the details. A Turabian 9 mode applies the student manual’s rules, which still follow the 17th edition: place of publication, chapter page ranges in the bibliography, and up to three authors named in notes.
How to use it
- Choose Notes and bibliography or Author-date — and Chicago 18 or Turabian 9 — under Style settings.
- Paste a DOI, ISBN or web address into Autofill, or pick the type of source and fill in the form.
- Type the page you are citing into Page or location: it goes into the full and short notes, or into the parenthetical citation, with page ranges shortened the Chicago way (117–18).
- Use the full note the first time you cite a source and the short note after that; add a Short title if the automatic one reads oddly.
- Copy each part, or Add to list to build your bibliography or reference list and download it for Word.
Examples
Book · Charles Yu · Interior Chinatown · Pantheon Books, 2020 · page 45
Note: Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown (Pantheon Books, 2020), 45. Short note: Yu, Interior Chinatown, 45. Bibliography: Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown. Pantheon Books, 2020.
The book title is italic in the tool. Chicago 18 no longer asks for the place of publication.
Journal article · Benjamin Lindquist · Critical Inquiry 50, no. 2 (2023): 225–51 · DOI 10.1086/727651 · page 230
Lindquist, Benjamin. 2023. “The Art of Text-to-Speech.” Critical Inquiry 50 (2): 225–51. https://doi.org/10.1086/727651. (Lindquist 2023, 230)
Web page · no author · Yale University · accessed 8 March 2022
Note: “About Yale: Yale Facts,” Yale University, accessed March 8, 2022, https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts. Bibliography: Yale University. “About Yale: Yale Facts.” Accessed March 8, 2022. https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts.
These examples are from the Chicago Manual of Style’s own Citation Quick Guide.
Common uses
- Footnotes and a bibliography for history, art history, philosophy, religion and literature papers.
- Author-date references for social-science and science papers that ask for Chicago.
- Turabian-style papers and theses at universities that set A Manual for Writers (9th edition).
- Switching one list between notes and bibliography and author-date when a department changes its requirements.
Chicago 18 rules this generator applies
- Authors in notes: one or two authors are named; three or more become the first author followed by “et al.”.
- Authors in the bibliography and reference list: up to six are listed, the first with the surname first; for more than six, the first three, then “et al.”.
- No place of publication in book citations (CMOS 14.30), and no page range for a chapter in the bibliography (14.8) — cite pages in the note instead.
- Titles in headline-style capitalisation; articles, chapters and web pages in quotation marks, books and periodicals in italics.
- Dates: month day, year in notes and bibliographies; in author-date entries the year follows the author and the month and day come after the periodical, without the year again.
- Access dates only for online sources without a publication or revision date.
- Links: DOIs as https://doi.org/…, otherwise the URL or the database name (for example EBSCOhost or ProQuest with the dissertation number).
- Page ranges shortened per CMOS 9.64 (225–51, 104–5, 1496–1504).
Source: Chicago Manual of Style Citation Quick Guide, notes and bibliography and author-date, 18th edition.
Turabian 9 mode
Kate L. Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (9th edition) adapts Chicago for students and is still based on the 17th edition of the Manual. In this mode the generator gives the place of publication (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017), keeps the chapter page range in the bibliography, names up to three authors in notes and in author-date citations (four or more become “et al.”), lists up to ten authors in the bibliography (more than ten: the first seven and “et al.”), and repeats the year in author-date entries for news articles. Source: the Turabian Citation Quick Guide.
Limitations
- Autofill copies publisher and catalogue records, which can be incomplete; check every field against the source, including how names were split into family and given names (compound surnames such as García Márquez).
- Names written family name first without a comma (such as Liu Xinwu) are inverted like Western names; type such a name as an organisation to keep it unchanged, and adjust the short note by hand.
- Labels Chicago adds to some dates (“last modified”, “effective”) and extra details such as a lecture’s moderator or a podcast episode number are not collected — add them by hand if needed.
- Short titles are made automatically from the main title; for long titles Chicago expects the key words, so check the short note and use the Short title field.
- Some DOI agencies (for example Japan Link Center) refuse lookups from a web page, and many news sites block automated requests.
Privacy
Everything you type stays in your browser except the autofill box: a DOI goes to doi.org (and the agency it forwards to), an ISBN to Open Library, and a web address to MySmartCoPilot’s server, which reads that page and returns only its citation details — neither the page nor the web address is stored. Your reference list is kept only in this page, never uploaded, and is gone when you reload or leave it.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use notes and bibliography or author-date?
Use the system your instructor, department or journal asks for. Notes and bibliography is usual in the humanities; author-date in the sciences and social sciences. The details of each source are the same — only the way they are arranged changes, so you can switch under Style settings at any time.
What changed in the 18th edition?
Among other changes, book citations no longer need the place of publication, a chapter’s page range is no longer required in the bibliography, and notes and author-date citations use “et al.” for three or more authors. Bibliographies list up to six authors; with more than six, the first three and “et al.”.
Should I use ibid.?
Chicago prefers short notes to ibid., so this generator gives a short note for every later citation. If your instructor wants ibid., use it in place of a short note that repeats the one just before it.
When do I add an access date?
Only when an online source shows no date of publication or revision. If your instructor asks for access dates everywhere, choose For every source with a URL under Style settings.
Is Turabian the same as Chicago?
Turabian is the Chicago style for students. Its current, 9th edition follows the 17th edition of the Manual, so it differs in a few details, such as giving the place of publication. Choose Turabian 9 under Style settings if your instructor asks for it.
Is this an official Chicago tool?
No. MySmartCoPilot is not affiliated with the University of Chicago Press. The rules come from the Manual’s published quick guides; follow your instructor where their requirements differ.