Turabian Book Citation: Notes, Bibliography and Bible Examples (9th Edition)

A Turabian book citation follows Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 9th edition, which applies the 17th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style to student papers. Most history and religion courses use its notes-bibliography system: a superscript number points to a footnote, and a bibliography lists every book.

Each book can appear in three forms:

• Full note the first time you cite it: Katie Kitamura, A Separation (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017), 25.
• Short note after that: Kitamura, Separation, 91.
• Bibliography entry: Kitamura, Katie. A Separation. New York: Riverhead Books, 2017.

Paste a title or ISBN into the citation tool above to see all three. The official Turabian book citation examples in the notes-bibliography quick guide from the University of Chicago Press shows the same pattern for each book type below. For note placement, see Turabian footnotes; for the bibliography page, see the Turabian bibliography guide.

The University of Chicago Press lists a 10th edition for late 2026, so keep to the 9th until your school switches. Our guide to Turabian vs Chicago explains how the manuals relate.

Every Turabian book bibliography entry uses the same parts as the note, in a different order with different punctuation. The special cases below add one element each.

Titles and pages

Italicize book titles and capitalize them headline style, with a colon before the subtitle. A Turabian book bibliography entry never takes a page. Notes end with the exact page, a bare number with no "p." Union University's notes guide makes the same point: omit page numbers in the bibliography and keep them in notes.

One author

In the note, give the name in normal order as it appears on the title page. In the bibliography entry, invert it: Kitamura, Katie.

Two or three authors

List every author in both forms, joined by "and." In the bibliography, invert only the first name and put a comma before "and" when there are three: Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. Union University's guide and Covenant Theological Seminary's guide both list them in full.

Four or more authors

In the note, give only the first author followed by et al.: Wayne C. Booth et al., The Craft of Research, 4th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 45. Northwest Missouri State University's Turabian guide and Memorial University's quick guide list all authors in the bibliography, as the table shows. Chicago 18 changed these thresholds; our Chicago book citation guide covers them.

The whole edited book

Put the editor in the author's place and add ed. after the name in the note: John D’Agata, ed., The Making of the American Essay (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2016), 19–20. In the bibliography, the name is inverted and ed. follows it. Use it only when you discuss the collection as a whole. Every Turabian citation for an edited book starts by asking which of the two you are citing.

A chapter in an edited book

Most of the time a Turabian citation for an edited book names one chapter. Start with the chapter's author and its title in quotation marks, then in and the book's title in italics. The note says ed. before the editor's name; the bibliography spells out edited by and gives the chapter's full page range. The note still cites only the page where your quotation or idea appears.

Each of these book types adds one element to the basic Turabian book citation. The table shows where it goes.

Editions

Cite the edition you used, and say nothing about a first edition. Covenant Theological Seminary's guide notes that the label is lowercase in the note and capitalized in the bibliography.

Translations and ebooks

Format an ebook like a print book, then name how you read it: a URL, a library database such as EBSCOhost, or a format such as Kindle. With no stable pages, give a chapter or section, as in "chap. 3, Kindle" from the official quick guide.

Multivolume works

For one volume with its own title, name the volume and the set, as in the Caro example. For a set without volume titles, put the volume before the page with a colon, as in 2:257. For several volumes, the Covenant guide gives the total, such as 3 vols., in the bibliography.

Turabian 9 keeps the city before the publisher. Every book example in the official quick guide has one, such as New York: Riverhead Books.

What Chicago 18 changed

The 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, published in 2024, no longer requires the place of publication for books published since 1900, according to the University of Portland's summary of what is new. So Chicago 18 reads Riverhead Books, 2017, and Turabian 9 reads New York: Riverhead Books, 2017.

Use the city unless your instructor names the 18th edition. A school guide always outranks the manual.

A Turabian Bible citation is shorter than a book citation. You cite a passage by book, chapter and verse, and the Bible usually does not go in the bibliography. Every Turabian Bible citation works the same way: cite the passage, name the version, skip the page.

Where the citation goes

For a Turabian Bible citation, Princeton University Library's guide to citing sacred texts, which follows Chicago, says Bible references usually appear in text citations or notes, not in bibliographies. Grace College's Turabian Bible guide agrees: cite passages in footnotes or in parentheses in the body, and leave them out of the bibliography. A Bible note has no page number.

When a Bible does need an entry

Only the Bible's own text is exempt. If you cite a study note from a study Bible, you are citing its author. Hope International University's Chicago guide says that note needs a full footnote and bibliography entry. Cite it like a chapter in an edited work.

A School Rule Can Change a Turabian Bible Citation

Liberty University's Turabian quick guide says the Bible is cited only in parentheses in the body and is not listed in the bibliography. That is a school rule on top of the manual, so check your syllabus. Our Turabian format guide covers Liberty's other house rules.

How to cite the Bible in Turabian comes down to three choices: how to abbreviate the book, how to write the chapter and verse, and how to name the version.

Book abbreviations

Examples are from Princeton University Library's Chicago-based guide. Pick traditional or shorter abbreviations and use one system throughout. Grace College's guide says not to italicize book or version names.

Naming the version

Books and numbering differ between versions. For general readers, spell it out the first time: 2 Kings 11:8 (New Revised Standard Version). After that, an abbreviation is fine: 1 Cor. 6:1–10 (NRSV). If you quote more than one version, name each when it first appears.

Some social science courses use Turabian's author-date system instead of notes. The details stay the same, but the year moves after the author and a parenthetical citation replaces the footnote.

• In text: (Kitamura 2017, 25)
• Reference list: Kitamura, Katie. 2017. A Separation. New York: Riverhead Books.

Two authors: (Sassler and Miller 2017, 114). Four or more: (Booth et al. 2016, 45). A chapter in an edited book: (Rowlandson 2016, 19–20), listed as Rowlandson, Mary. 2016. “The Narrative of My Captivity.” In The Making of the American Essay, edited by John D’Agata, 19–56. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.

The official author-date quick guide shows these forms. For the system's parenthetical rules, see our Chicago in-text citation guide.

Check each entry against this list.

A final check

Every Turabian book citation in your notes should appear once in your bibliography, and the reverse. The Turabian Title Page Generator sets up the first page of the same paper, and every guide is on our student writing guides page. When you're ready to cite, let the free Turabian citation generator format each note and entry from an ISBN.