Turabian Format: How to Set Up a Class Paper (9th Edition)

Turabian is the set of rules in Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, published by the University of Chicago Press. It adapts The Chicago Manual of Style for students: the citation rules are Chicago's, and the book adds plain guidance on formatting class papers, theses and dissertations. The current 9th edition (2018) follows the 17th edition of the Chicago manual.

Which edition to use

The University of Chicago Press has announced a 10th edition for late 2026. Until your instructor or school switches, the 9th edition remains the standard, and every rule on this page follows it. When the new edition arrives, check your syllabus before changing anything.

Who uses it

Turabian is common in history, religion, theology and other humanities courses. Many US Christian universities and seminaries require it in place of APA or MLA, so it's the house style for a large share of Bible, ministry and church history papers.

Tools for the first and last pages

For the first page of your paper, the Turabian Title Page Generator lays out the title, your name, the course and the date for you. For the notes and bibliography, the Turabian Citation Machine formats each source from a link, DOI or ISBN.

Most Turabian formatting comes down to a few settings you choose once. Where Turabian gives a choice, such as where the page number goes, pick one option and use it on every page.

Margins and font

Turabian asks for margins of at least 1 inch. Choose a plain, readable font. Times New Roman at 12 points is the safe default; Union University's Turabian formatting guide notes that nothing should be set smaller than 10 points.

Spacing

Double-space the body of the paper. The exceptions are single-spaced: block quotations, footnotes or endnotes, bibliography entries, table titles and figure captions. Leave a blank line between single-spaced items so each note or entry stands apart.

Number every page in Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3) in the same spot: the top right corner or the bottom center. Turabian allows either; many schools pick top right. Put nothing else in the header unless your instructor asks for your last name or a short title next to the number.

The title page and page 1

A class paper with a separate title page counts that page as page 1 but prints no number on it, so the first page of text shows 2. If your instructor wants no title page, put the title and your details at the top of page 1 and number from there. The layout of the title page itself is easiest to get right with the title page generator.

Turabian doesn't require headings in a short paper or insist on one style, but every heading at the same level must look the same. The 9th edition suggests this five-level system, which most schools adopt as is.

How many levels a class paper needs

A typical paper for a history or theology class needs one or two levels: level 1 for main sections such as Introduction and Conclusion, and level 2 for subsections inside them. Don't number the headings unless your instructor wants numbers.

Keep headings with their text

Never leave a heading alone at the bottom of a page; move it to the top of the next one.

How you present a quotation depends on its length. Turabian draws the line at five lines of prose.

Run-in quotations

A quotation of four lines or fewer stays inside your paragraph, in quotation marks. The note number goes after the closing quotation mark and after any punctuation, so a sentence ends with a period, the quotation mark, then the superscript number.

Block quotations

A quotation of five or more lines of prose becomes a block quotation. Start it on a new line, indent the whole passage 0.5 inch from the left margin, single-space it, and leave a blank line before and after. Don't put quotation marks around it. The note number goes at the end of the block, after the final punctuation.

Introduce every quotation

Lead into each quotation with your own words. A block quotation dropped in without an introduction draws comments in the margin.

Most Turabian papers use the notes-bibliography system: a numbered note for each source you cite and a bibliography at the end. Turabian also describes an author-date system with parenthetical citations, used more in the social sciences; follow your assignment.

Where the notes go

Footnotes sit at the bottom of the page where you cite the source, below a short separator line. Endnotes collect all the notes on a new page after the text, titled Notes, before the bibliography. Footnotes are the usual choice for a class paper, and some schools don't allow endnotes at all.

How notes look

In your text, the note number is a superscript after the punctuation. Each note is single-spaced with the first line indented 0.5 inch, and a blank line separates one note from the next. Turabian allows either a full-size number followed by a period or a superscript number followed by a space at the start of the note itself, so the number your word processor inserts is fine. The first note for a source gives full details; later notes use a short form with the author's last name, a short title and the page.

Where the bibliography goes

The bibliography begins on a new page after the text (and after any endnotes or appendixes, if your school puts appendixes first). Center the title Bibliography at the top, leave two blank lines, then list every source alphabetically by the author's last name. Single-space each entry with a 0.5-inch hanging indent and leave a blank line between entries. The Turabian citation generator produces the note, the short note and the bibliography entry for each source, and the Alphabetizer sorts a list you typed by hand.

Turabian format citation basics

The Turabian citation quick guide on the Chicago Manual of Style site shows the note and bibliography pattern for books, articles, websites and more. The key differences: notes use commas and parentheses and give the author's name in normal order; bibliography entries use periods and invert the first author's name.

Place each table or figure near the paragraph that first mentions it, and refer to it by number.

Tables

Label tables above the table, flush left, with the word Table, an Arabic numeral and a period, followed by a short title on the same line: Table 1. Students who attend chapel weekly, by class year. Single-space the title if it runs to two lines.

Figures

Charts, maps, photographs and diagrams are figures. Label them below the image, flush left: Figure 1. followed by a caption. Number figures separately from tables.

Sources for tables and figures

A table or figure taken from another work gets a source line below it, starting with Source: and a note-form citation.

Here is how a short research paper in Turabian style fits together from the first page to the last. The sample is an eight-page paper (title page included) for a church history course at a US Christian college, citing the real sources shown in the examples above.

What a body page looks like

On a body page, the text is double-spaced with 0.5-inch paragraph indents, a block quotation sits indented and single-spaced, and the footnotes at the bottom are single-spaced with a blank line between them.

A research paper in Turabian style, example by example

Noll's book gets a full first note (1. Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 23.) and a short note after that (3. Noll, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 23.).

The last page of the sample is the bibliography. These three entries were formatted with our citation engine under Turabian 9 rules and are shown in alphabetical order:

Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Noll, Mark A. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994.

White, Lynn, Jr. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155, no. 3767 (March 1967): 1203–7. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.155.3767.1203.

What to notice

Each entry starts at the left margin, and every following line is indented 0.5 inch. Book and journal titles are italic; the article title is in quotation marks. The DOI goes at the end as a full link. Single-space each entry and leave one blank line between them.

Schools that require Turabian sometimes add rules of their own on top of the manual. Always follow your school's guide and your instructor's syllabus when they differ from the book.

Liberty University Turabian format

Liberty University's Turabian Format Quick Guide follows the 9th edition with a few house rules. Liberty uses the notes-bibliography system (author-date only for book reviews), does not permit endnotes, and requires ibid. for consecutive notes to the same source on the same page. Its guide notes that the ibid. rule differs from the 9th edition, which prefers shortened notes. Liberty also sets the five heading levels in a fixed style and puts the bibliography title in bold.

Papers for other classes

If your other courses use different styles, our guides to APA format guidelines and the MLA heading cover their first-page setups, and every guide is listed on the student writing guides page.

Most points lost on format come from a handful of slips. Check your draft against this list before you submit.

A final check

Every source in your notes should appear once in the bibliography, in alphabetical order. If you'd rather not format each entry by hand, the Turabian Citation Machine does it from a link or DOI. Our IEEE reference format guide covers the numbered style used in engineering courses.