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Chicago Referencing

Instructions and links for Referencing support

General formatting rules

Quoted text may be either run-in to the surrounding text and enclosed in quotation marks or set off as a block quotation. In general a short quote should be run-in and quotes longer than 100 words should be block quotes.

  • Run-in quotes

Incorporate the quote grammatically into your sentence and enclose the exact words in quote marks like this:

The narrator’s constant references to “malicious code and obsolete data” detract from a more fundamental issue—that we are dumping “the burden of human history” onto computer hard drives.

  • Block quotes

Start the quote with a new paragraph and indent the text. Use double spacing and include the page number in the corresponding footnote. Do not use quotation marks.

  • Author's names appear as the first element in the reference.
  • Use the full names of authors in the footnote eg. Anne Cleary.
  • In the bibliography invert the first author's name so the family name appears first eg. Cleary, Anne. A comma must appear both before and after the first author’s given name or initials. Use "and", not an ampersand to join multiple authors names.
  • Authors’ names are normally given as they appear within the source itself. If correct identification is needed, first names may be given. If an author uses their given name in one cited work and initials in another (e.g., “Mary L. Jones” versus “M. L. Jones”), the same form, preferably the fuller one, should be used in references to that author for both works.
  • Two or three authors (or editors) of the same work are listed in the order in which they appear with the source.