Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (author–date)
Free Chicago style citation generator.
The Chicago Manual of Style has two systems: notes and bibliography, common in history and the arts, and author–date, used in the sciences and social sciences. This generator uses the author–date system from the 18th edition (2024), which puts the surname and year in the text and full details in a reference list.
Paste a DOI, a link, an ISBN or a title. The generator finds the source's details, lets you check and edit them, then writes the reference entry and both forms of in-text citation.
The style
How Chicago citations work.
Used in: History, the arts and many social sciences; the author–date system is common in the natural and social sciences.
Chicago in-text citations
- Give the surname and year with no comma: (Akbari 2016). Add a page after a comma: (Akbari 2016, 836).
- Narrative citations put the year in parentheses after the name: Akbari (2016) shows…
- Two authors: (Akbari and Kolokotsa 2016), always "and", never "&". Three or more: (Santamouris et al. 2017).
- No author: a shortened title of up to four words, ("Cooling Cities" 2020). No date: (Smith n.d.).
- Several sources: separate with semicolons, (Akbari 2016; Oke 2017).
The reference list
- Title the list "References", alphabetical, with a hanging indent.
- Put the year straight after the author: Surname, First name. Year.
- Invert only the first author; later authors are First Last, joined with "and". Use full first names as the source gives them.
- List up to six authors; with more than six, give the first three and "et al."
- Use headline-style (title case) capitalisation for all titles. Articles and webpages go in quotation marks; books and journals in italics.
- Journal entries give the volume, issue and pages: Nature 521 (7553): 436–44. Prefer a DOI written as https://doi.org/…. The 18th edition leaves out the place of publication.
Chicago citation examples
Journal article
LeCun, Yann, Yoshua Bengio, and Geoffrey Hinton. 2015. "Deep Learning." Nature 521 (7553): 436–44. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.
In text: (LeCun et al. 2015) · LeCun et al. (2015)
Book
Austen, Jane. 2003. Pride and Prejudice. Penguin Books.
In text: (Austen 2003) · Austen (2003)
Book chapter
Moreno, Lucia. 2021. "Green Roofs in Dense Districts." In Cooling the City, edited by Ravi Patel, 45–68. Routledge.
In text: (Moreno 2021)
Webpage with no date
World Health Organization. n.d. "Depressive Disorder (Depression)." Accessed November 4, 2026. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression.
In text: (World Health Organization n.d.)
The journal, book and webpage examples are real sources; the chapter is an illustrative example from the style rules.
Common Chicago mistakes
- Putting a comma between the author and the year in text: write (Oke 2017), not (Oke, 2017).
- Putting the year at the end of the entry, as in notes and bibliography, instead of after the author.
- Using initials or "&", or inverting the second author.
- Sentence-casing titles; Chicago uses headline style throughout.
- Adding a city of publication or an access date to a dated, published source.
FAQ
Chicago citation questions.
Is this Chicago citation generator free?
Yes. You can create citations without an account, up to 20 an hour. EssayMate students can also cite from inside the essay editor.
Does it do Chicago notes and bibliography (footnotes)?
Not yet: it formats the author–date system. If your course uses footnotes, your bibliography entries are close to the reference entries here, but the year moves to the end and footnotes need their own short form.
What changed in the 18th edition?
Among other things, Chicago 18 drops the place of publication from book entries and prefers DOIs written as https://doi.org/ links. The generator follows those rules.
Is Turabian the same as Chicago?
Turabian is a version of Chicago for student papers. Its author–date references follow the same pattern, so these citations work for most Turabian assignments; check your instructor's preferences.
Writing the essay too?
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