Chicago Style Paper Format: How to Set Up an Essay or Research Paper

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) is written mainly for authors, editors and publishers, and its citation rules are what most people mean by Chicago. A class paper is a different job. Students are usually pointed to A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations by Kate L. Turabian, which the University of Chicago Press describes as a smaller version of the Chicago manual written for students. Our Turabian format guide covers that book's rules in full, so this page keeps to the settings that matter for a typical essay or research paper.

Your instructor's rules come first

Chicago's formatting advice is a recommendation, not a law. CMOS Shop Talk warns that "your instructor's requirements may overrule Chicago's formatting recommendations." If your syllabus says something different, follow the syllabus.

Start with the title page tool

If your instructor wants a separate first page, the Chicago title page generator lays out the title, your name, the class and the date, and leaves the page unnumbered. The rest of this Chicago style paper format guide covers everything after that page: spacing, numbers, headings, quotations, notes and sources.

These seven settings cover most of a Chicago style essay format. Choose them once, then apply them to every page of your Chicago style paper.

Margins and font

Set margins of at least 1 inch for a Chicago style paper. The Purdue OWL Chicago supplement asks for a readable typeface such as Times New Roman or Courier and a size of no less than 10 point, preferably 12 point. Most college guides give the same Chicago style font advice: Times New Roman, 12 point, unless your instructor names another.

Spacing

Double-space the main text. The exceptions are single-spaced: block quotations, notes, bibliography entries, table titles and figure captions. CMOS Shop Talk also advises one space between sentences rather than two.

For Chicago style page numbers, Shop Talk advises inserting them "at the top right or bottom center, half an inch from the edge of the page." Pick one position for your Chicago style page numbers and keep it, because most schools now expect a consistent placement throughout the paper.

Where the numbering starts

Practice differs by school, so ask. Shop Talk says not to print a number on a title page but to count it, so the first page of text shows 2. The Purdue OWL supplement simply shows 1 on the first page of text, and some instructors follow that. If you have no separate title page, the first page is simply page 1 and can show its number.

Use Arabic numerals

Number the paper with plain Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3). Roman numerals belong to the front matter of a thesis or dissertation, not to a class paper.

A Chicago style header is usually just the page number. Unlike APA, a student Chicago paper doesn't require a running head with a shortened title, and the guides we checked don't ask for one.

When a last name is added

Some instructors want your last name before the number, such as "Rodriguez 4," and templates like Collin College's put it there. Others want only the number. Because this varies by class, follow your syllabus or sample paper. If it says nothing, the number alone is the safe default.

Header formatting

Use the same font and size in the Chicago style header as in the body, and keep the header half an inch from the top edge. If you hide the number on a separate first page, use Word's Different First Page setting so the later pages still carry their numbers.

Chicago doesn't require a cover page for a Chicago style paper. Turabian and the Purdue OWL supplement treat it as required only when the instructor or context calls for one. Without it, the title goes at the top of page 1, followed by the text.

With a separate cover page

Center the title about a third of the way down the page, in headline-style capitals. Put your name, the class and the date several lines lower, double-spaced. Put a subtitle on its own line, ending the title line with a colon. For exact spacing, see our title page generator for Chicago papers, which also lets you choose whether page numbering starts at 1 or 2.

Without one

Type the title centered at the top of the first page, add your name and class details if your instructor asks, then begin the text. The first illustration above shows this layout.

Chicago style headings aren't required in a short paper, and the Purdue OWL supplement recommends no more than three levels. Whatever you pick for your Chicago style headings, keep them consistent and parallel, use headline-style capitals, and don't end a heading with a period. Turabian's optional five-level system sets the pattern most schools adopt.

Chicago style subheadings in practice

A seven-page paper might use level 1 for sections such as Introduction, Background and Conclusion, and level 2 for subsections. Don't number headings unless asked. Never leave a heading alone at the bottom of a page.

A check on consistency

Chicago style heading rules mostly come down to consistency. Every level 2 heading should match every other level 2 heading in position, type and capitalization.

In a Chicago style paper, quote a short passage inside your paragraph in quotation marks. Purdue OWL says to set off prose as a block when it runs five or more lines or more than 100 words, and to block two or more lines of poetry.

How to block a quotation

Start it on a new line and indent it with your word processor's indentation tool, not with the space bar. Leave out the quotation marks. Single-space it, leave a blank line above and below, and put the note number after the final punctuation. Lead into every block with a sentence of your own. Our Chicago in-text citation guide shows how to write the note that follows.

Most papers in Chicago style use footnotes with a bibliography, the notes-bibliography system. Number the notes consecutively from 1 through the paper. In the text, set the number in superscript at the end of the clause or sentence, after all punctuation except a dash.

How each note looks

Footnotes sit at the bottom of the page where you cite the source. Indent the first line, single-space each note and leave a blank line between notes, as the CSUSB and Collin College guides suggest. The number at the start of the note can be full size with a period or superscript; Purdue OWL says either is acceptable, so the number Word inserts is fine. Keep the note text at least 10 points.

Full notes and short notes

The first note for a source gives full publication details; later notes use the author's last name, a short title and the page. Our Turabian footnotes guide explains the patterns, and the Chicago footnote generator builds them from a link, DOI or ISBN. If you prefer author-date citations in parentheses, see Chicago author-date citation.

The bibliography starts on a new page after the last page of text. Center the title Bibliography, leave two blank lines and list every source alphabetically by the author's last name. Single-space each entry with a hanging indent, so the first line starts at the margin and the rest are indented. Leave a blank line between entries, as Purdue OWL describes; a few schools double-space between them, so check.

Alphabetizing and details

Use "and," not an ampersand, between author names, and give each publisher's name as it appears, minus Inc. or Co. For an author-date paper the page is titled References. The Chicago citation generator formats each entry, and our Alphabetizer sorts a list you typed by hand. For the entry patterns themselves, read the Chicago in-text citation guide.

Here is how a short Chicago style research paper fits together. The sample is an eight-page paper for a US history course, with a separate cover page. The topic and text are invented for this guide, and the book cited is a real one.

What to notice

On a body page, the text is double-spaced with half-inch indents. A block quotation sits indented and single-spaced, and each footnote is single-spaced with a blank line after it. If you skip the cover page, the first page of text becomes page 1 and the rest shift down by one.

Using the sample as a template

Build your Chicago style paper once with these settings, save it, and reuse it as a Chicago format template for later papers. Change only the title, the text and the sources.

Most lost points in a Chicago style paper come from a few slips. Check your draft against this list before submitting.

A final check

Make sure every source in your notes appears once in the bibliography. If your class is also assigned other styles, our APA format guidelines and MLA heading guides cover their setups, and every guide is listed on the student writing guides page. To format the first page without fuss, use the Chicago title page generator one last time.