Chicago Citation Generator

Whatever you paste, the Chicago citation generator works out what it is before it looks anything up. A hint under the box says "DOI detected", "ISBN detected", "Web address detected" or "We'll search by title".

DOI, ISBN, URL or title

• DOI (for example 10.2307/1914185): the record comes from the DOI registry at doi.org, with Crossref as a backup. This is the most reliable route for journal articles.
• ISBN (10 or 13 digits, hyphens allowed): Open Library first, then Google Books.
• URL: the page's own metadata, such as the citation tags journals and newspapers publish. If the page lists a DOI, the DOI record is used instead.
• Title: Crossref and Open Library are searched together, and the closest matches are listed for you to pick from.

What the status labels mean

Source details matched means the details came from a bibliographic record. Details need review means something is missing or came from the web page itself, so check the highlighted fields. Source not verified means nothing reliable was found; you type the rest from the source. The Chicago citation generator never guesses an author or a date.

PDFs

A direct PDF link can't be read as a web page, so a blank form opens with the link filled in. If the PDF is a journal article, paste its DOI instead. Try it with an example runs a real lookup on the DOI of an Econometrica article.

The Chicago Manual of Style has two citation systems. They record the same facts, so the Chicago citation generator switches between them without asking you for anything new. What changes is how you point to the source and where the year sits. The publisher's Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide has sample citations for both systems.

Chicago author-date citation generator

Select Author-Date and the Chicago author-date citation generator gives three versions of each source: the reference list entry, the parenthetical citation, such as (Kahneman and Tversky 1979, 267), and a narrative form for when the names are part of your sentence: Kahneman and Tversky (1979, 267). Type the page into Page number (optional) and it follows the year. A source with no date gets "n.d.", and three or more authors become "Kahneman et al. 2021" in the 18th edition.

Which system should you use?

Your syllabus decides. A US history seminar usually expects footnotes; a sociology course usually expects author-date. If the assignment only says "Chicago style", ask. In the Chicago citation generator a saved list changes system in one click, but citations already in your draft don't. The Chicago Footnote Generator covers the notes side in depth: first notes, shortened notes, ibid. and endnotes.

The 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style came out in 2024, and the Chicago citation generator uses it unless you select the 17th. These are the changes students notice, each checked against the tool's own output.

Purdue OWL's Chicago 18th edition guide confirms that place of publication is no longer required in notes or bibliography entries, and that Chicago still discourages ibid.

Chicago 17th citation generator

Some instructors still teach the 17th edition. Select 17th in the Edition row and every citation, including your saved list, is reformatted with cities and full author lists. The City of publication field in the book form only appears in your citation when the 17th edition is on.

Chicago and Turabian: which one is yours?

Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers is Chicago style adapted for students, and many US colleges and seminaries ask for it by name. When a paper says "Turabian", use the Turabian Citation Machine, or pick Turabian from the Other styles menu here.

Every Chicago bibliography entry follows one plan: who, what, and where it was published. Learn it once and you can check any citation, from this Chicago manual of style citation generator or anywhere else.

The parts of an entry

1. Author, last name first: "Yu, Charles." A second author is written first name first: "Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky."
2. Title. Books, journals, newspapers, films and websites are in italics; articles, chapters and web pages go in quotation marks. Both use headline-style capitalization.
3. Publication facts: publisher and year for a book; journal, volume, issue, year and pages for an article; the full date for a newspaper.
4. DOI or URL at the end. A DOI is written as a link, https://doi.org/10.2307/1914185, and beats a database URL.

Bibliography and reference list layout

Entries are alphabetical by the first word, usually the author's last name, with a half-inch hanging indent. The list is titled Bibliography in notes and bibliography and References in author-date. Chicago allows single spacing with a blank line between entries, though many instructors want everything double-spaced.

Free Chicago citation generator vs typing it yourself

Checking a few entries by hand is a good habit. The Chicago citation generator earns its keep on punctuation students often miss: the comma after the first author's given name, "no." before an issue, the page range "263–91", and the period inside closing quotation marks.

The Chicago style citation generator form has nine source types. Here is what to check for the ones students cite most. The examples above show finished entries.

Chicago journal article citation generator

Paste the DOI if the article has one; it brings in the volume, issue and pages. Articles from JSTOR, EBSCO or ProQuest without a DOI need the journal, volume, issue, year and pages.

Chicago website citation generator

Paste the URL, then check the author (often an organization), page title, site name and date. With no date, keep the access date the tool adds automatically.

Chicago newspaper article citation generator

Links usually bring the headline, author and date. Chicago usually omits page numbers for newspapers, and the tool leaves them out, so add the page by hand only if your instructor asks.

Chicago magazine article citation generator

Choose Magazine under More and give the magazine name and issue date. Volume and issue are optional for magazines.

Chicago book chapter citation generator

Choose Book chapter, then enter the chapter author and title, the book title, any editors and the publisher. Give the page you cite in the note or in-text citation.

Images and encyclopedia entries

There is no image or encyclopedia type. For an artwork on a museum website or an online encyclopedia article, use Website. A report published as a PDF fits Report.

Select Add to bibliography and the source joins the active list, sorted and formatted in the system and edition you have selected. Add the same source twice, by DOI or by matching title, year and first author, and the Chicago citation generator warns you instead of duplicating it.

Download options

• Download for Word: a .docx with the heading (Bibliography or References) centered and bold, Times New Roman 12 point and a half-inch hanging indent.
• Copy all: the whole list with italics kept, for Google Docs or Word.
• More formats: plain text, RIS for Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote, and BibTeX for LaTeX and Overleaf.

How lists are kept

Lists live in your browser's local storage on this device, not in an account. They survive closing the tab but not clearing your browsing data, and they don't follow you to another computer, so export before you switch. Use New list for each assignment, such as "APUSH DBQ" or "HIST 2010 paper". The Word file holds the list only; footnotes go into your paper one at a time, as the Chicago Footnote Generator explains.

Most points lost on Chicago citations come from a handful of habits.

• Mixing the two systems. Footnotes and (Author Year) citations don't belong in the same paper.
• Copying a 17th edition example. Older guides show "New York: Pantheon Books". Unless your instructor asks for the 17th, drop the city.
• Trusting capitals from a database. Records sometimes arrive in all capitals. Fix the title in the form so it reads in headline style.
• Inventing missing details. No author? Start with the organization or the title. No date? Use the access date. Never guess.
• A database link instead of a DOI. Long library URLs break off campus. Paste the DOI and it is written as a link.
• An unsorted list. The Chicago citation generator sorts your list for you; pasting entries into your draft by hand is where order slips.

If you edit the list by hand, run it through the Alphabetizer, and check your length with the Word Counter, which can leave the bibliography out of the count.

Chicago is the citation style of history. Many students meet it first in AP US History or AP European History research papers. In college it runs through history, art history, music, religious studies and philosophy, while author-date shows up in sociology, anthropology and political science.

Setting up the rest of the paper

Chicago papers usually open with a title page. The Chicago Title Page Generator lays it out and downloads it as a Word file. For other classes, the APA Citation Machine and MLA Citation Maker work like this Chicago citation generator.

Chicago style citation maker for group projects

Lists live in one browser, so pick one person to keep the list, or have each person export RIS into a shared Zotero library. Every generator we make is on the citation machines page.

Yes. The Chicago citation generator is free, with no account; lookups are capped at 60 every 10 minutes. Here is what is sent where.

What leaves your browser

• Lookups. What you paste goes to our server, which asks doi.org, Crossref, Open Library or Google Books, or fetches the public web page you linked. Results are kept in server memory for up to six hours so repeat lookups are quick, and lookups are limited to 60 every 10 minutes per IP address.
• Formatting. The source details are sent to our server, formatted and sent back. Nothing is saved to a database.

Your lists and downloads

Your lists are stored only in your browser's local storage, and the Word, RIS, BibTeX and text files are built on your device. To show a list formatted, its sources' details are sent to our server each time the list is displayed or switched to another style; they are formatted, sent straight back, never stored and never linked to an account. No AI is involved: a citation is either matched from a record or typed by you.

How the citations are formatted

Citations are formatted with citeproc-js, the open-source citation processor behind Zotero, and the Citation Style Language project's Chicago 18th and 17th edition styles, open style files maintained by Zotero and CSL volunteers (not published by the University of Chicago Press).