Chicago Style: Footnotes and Endnotes

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Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. Citation Guidelines

• What is Chicago Style?
• When to Include a Footnote or Endnote
• How to Create a Footnote or Endnote
• How to Create a Bibliography
  • Chicago Style: Citing Periodicals
  • Chicago Style: Citing Books
  • Chicago Style: Citing Book Sections
  • Chicago Style: Citing Electronic Sources
  • Chicago Style: Citing Other Sources
  • Chicago Style: Citing Primary Sources
• Chicago Style Author-Date System
• Chicago Style Formatting Guidelines and Sample
• Related Links
  • Chicago Manual of Style Online

What is Chicago Style?

Chicago style, sometimes called the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), is a citation style that is largely based on the use of footnotes or endnotes. While other common citation styles like MLA or APA include in-text citation information, Chicago Style uses a superscript number (¹) to indicate the corresponding citation information. Generally, professors prefer the use of footnotes (i.e. the citation is placed at the bottom of the page) to endnotes (i.e. the citation is placed at the end of the text) but check with your professor to see what they prefer. 

Chicago Style occasionally uses an Author-Date system in which the author information and date of publication are included in-text within parentheses, similar to APA Style. This format is less commonly used than other footnotes so if an assignment requires Chicago style, assume footnotes unless otherwise specified. 

The information on this page is based on the 18th Edition of The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers (University of Chicago Press 2024 TK). You will need to log in with your Trent credentials to access the site.     

What's new in the 18th Edition?

The following are the most significant changes we, in Academic Skills, feel are useful to the students at Trent University. The corresponding number next to the entry is the location of the change in the manual for any students or faculty that want more information. 

• Citing books no longer requires a place of publication (14.30)
• The page range of a chapter is no longer required in a bibliography entry (14.8)
• The singular "they" is explicitly accepted as a grammatically correct gender-neutral pronouns (5.51, 5.266)
• Cite up to six authors in a bibliography or first footnote reference entry before writing "et al."
  • Cite the first author and "et al." for three or more authors in a shortened footnote or author date format. (13.23, 13.107)
• Consecutive uses of an author's name in the bibliography repeats the name rather than using "___" (13.72)

When to Include a Footnote/Endnote

When You Have Used Your Own Words, Use a Footnote/Endnote to Cite:

• someone else's ideas or arguments that you have paraphrased or summarized.
• information or numerical data that is not common knowledge.

For example:

9.7 million soldiers were killed during World War I. ¹

However, information that is considered common knowledge within a discipline does not need a footnote. For example, the following would be considered common knowledge in history:

It is well known that World War I began in 1914 and was triggered by the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand.

Deciding what is common knowledge can be tricky.  So...when in doubt, cite your source!

Use Footnotes/Endnotes Immediately After Direct Quotations:

If you use a source’s exact words, this is referred to as a direct quotation. You must immediately follow it with a footnote/endnote. For example:

Hurl-Eamon argues for the importance of studying the wives of soldiers, claiming that they provide “a window into a much larger issue in early modern labour history.”¹

If you use a quotation that is longer than a hundred words (about 8 lines), set it off from the rest of your text as a block quotation. Block quotations begin on a new line and are indented using the indent button. Do not put quotation marks around block quotations. Block quotations are immediately followed by a footnote/endnote. For example:

Hurl-Eamon argues for the importance of studying the wives of soldiers, claiming that:

Military wives are a window into a much larger issue in early modern labour history. Though eighteenth-century wives were expected to contribute to the household coffers and the male breadwinner ideology did not take hold until the following century at the earliest, significant aspects of early modern culture presumed wifely dependence. Husbands were expected to “maintain” their wives, and parish overseers prosecuted men who did not uphold their duty of giving wives sufficient food, clothing, and shelter for their survival.²

^1. Jennine Hurl-Eamon, "The fiction of female dependence and the makeshift economy of soldiers, sailors, and their wives in eighteenth-century London," Labor History 49, no.4 (2008):481, doi:10.1080/00236560802376987

2. Hurl-Eamon, "The fiction of female dependence," 481.