Chicago Book Citation: Notes, Bibliography and Author-Date Examples

A Chicago book citation follows The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition, published in 2024. Most history, art history, music and religion courses use its notes-bibliography system: a superscript number in your sentence points to a footnote, and a bibliography at the end lists every book alphabetically.

Each book appears in up to three forms:

• Full note on the first mention: Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Press, 2006), 99.
• Short note after that: Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 101.
• Bibliography entry: Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin Press, 2006.

Paste a title or ISBN into the citation tool above to see all three, or open the full Chicago citation generator to build a whole bibliography. For the note numbers themselves, see our guide to Chicago in-text citation.

What changed in the 18th edition

The biggest change for a Chicago style citation for a book is that the place of publication is gone. The 17th edition wrote (New York: Penguin Press, 2006); the 18th writes (Penguin Press, 2006). Purdue OWL's CMOS 18 book citation page confirms that a city is no longer required unless it helps readers. The et al. rules changed too, as the table below shows.

Here is the Chicago style citation for a book with one author, broken into its parts. Every other book citation in Chicago style builds on it.

Titles

In a Chicago book citation, italicize book titles and use headline-style capitalization: capitalize the first and last words and all major words. Separate a title and subtitle with a colon. In short notes, drop the subtitle and an opening A, An or The, and cut longer titles to four words or fewer, as in Channels of Student Activism.

Publisher and year

Copy the publisher's name as it appears on the title page. You may drop "Inc." and "Co." The year is the copyright year for the edition you used, not a later printing.

Page numbers

Notes end with the exact page you cite. A Chicago style citation for a book in the bibliography never takes page numbers. The Chicago quick guide from the University of Chicago Press shows this pattern for every book type here.

The number of authors changes a book citation in Chicago style more than anything else, and the 18th edition changed the rules.

Two authors

A Chicago book citation with two authors lists both in every form. Only the first name is inverted in the bibliography, and a comma comes before "and": Binder, Amy J., and Jeffrey L. Kidder.

Three to six authors

In a note, give only the first author followed by et al.: Wei Ding et al., Information Architecture and UX Design: The Integration of Information Spaces (Springer, 2025), 29. In the bibliography, list all of them: Ding, Wei, Xia Lin, and Michael Zarro. The short note is Ding et al., Information Architecture, 29 (we trimmed the short title by hand).

Seven or more authors

In the bibliography, list the first three followed by et al. The note still uses the first author and et al.

The 17th edition rule

If your class still uses the 17th edition, list up to three authors in a note and use et al. for four or more. In the bibliography, list up to ten; for more than ten, list seven and et al. Ask your instructor which edition the course follows, and see our Turabian footnotes guide if your syllabus names Turabian, the student version of Chicago.

A Chicago citation for an edited book works like a normal entry, with the editors in the author slot followed by ed. or eds.

• Note: P. J. M. Marks and Stephen Parkin, eds., The Book by Design (University of Chicago Press, 2023).
• Bibliography: Marks, P. J. M., and Stephen Parkin, eds. The Book by Design. University of Chicago Press, 2023.

A chapter in an edited book

Most of the time a Chicago citation for an edited book names one chapter, not the whole collection. Start with the chapter's author and its title in quotation marks, then "in" and the book. In the note, write ed. before the editors' names; in the bibliography, spell out edited by. The 18th edition no longer requires the chapter's page range in the bibliography, so the Doyle entry above ends with the publisher and year.

When to cite the whole collection

Use the editors' entry only when you discuss the book as a whole. Otherwise, a Chicago citation for an edited book should name the chapter you quote.

A Chicago style textbook citation follows the book pattern, with two details that textbooks often have: an edition and several authors.

Editions

Put the edition after the title, abbreviated: 2nd ed., 4th ed., rev. ed. Don't mention a first edition. In a note, the edition goes before the parentheses: Thomas H. Cormen et al., Introduction to Algorithms, 4th ed. (MIT Press, 2022), 45. In the bibliography, it gets its own sentence: Introduction to Algorithms. 4th ed. MIT Press, 2022.

Online textbooks and courseware

For a Chicago style textbook citation of an ebook from a publisher's platform, cite the textbook itself, then add the platform or a URL at the end, as with other ebooks below. If the platform shows no stable page numbers, cite a chapter or section.

Each of these book types adds one element to the basic Chicago book citation. The table shows what to add and where, and the examples above show complete entries.

Ebooks with no page numbers

Kindle locations change with font size, so Chicago doesn't use them. In a note, cite a chapter (chap. 6) or a section heading instead. If the ebook shows the print page numbers, use those.

Multivolume works

When you cite one volume with its own title, name the volume and the set, as in the Caro entry. When you cite the whole set, give the number of volumes (4 vols.) after the title. In a note to a set, put the volume number before the page with a colon: 2:45.

No author

Begin the entry with the title and alphabetize it under the first word other than A, An or The. Don't write "Anonymous" unless the title page does. The Beowulf entry was written by hand: our engine puts the translator in the author slot, which some instructors accept but Chicago doesn't require.

Science and social science courses often use Chicago's author-date system instead of notes. A book citation in Chicago style keeps the same details; only the order and the in-text form change.

• In text: (Pollan 2006, 99)
• Reference list: Pollan, Michael. 2006. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin Press.

Several authors in author-date

Two authors: (Binder and Kidder 2022, 117). Three or more: (Cormen et al. 2022, 45). The reference list follows the same up-to-six rule as the bibliography.

For the full system, including how to cite a paraphrase and the n.d. rule, see our Chicago author-date citation guide. Our citation tool switches between the two systems with one click.

Most lost points come from a few slips in punctuation and order. Check each Chicago style citation for a book against this list.

Formatting the bibliography page

Start the bibliography on a new page, center the title Bibliography, single-space each entry with a blank line between entries, and use a 0.5-inch hanging indent. Our Turabian bibliography guide walks through the page setup, and the Chicago title page generator handles the cover page.

Other sources

For films, videos and artwork, see our Chicago movie and image citation guide. Every guide is listed on our student writing guides page. When you're ready to build your list, the free Chicago footnote generator formats each Chicago book citation from an ISBN or title.