Chicago Citation Generator
Updated August 2026
Paste a URL, DOI, or ISBN and get a Chicago style citation in seconds — select Chicago on the result to copy a bibliography-ready entry.
Chicago (from The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition) is the standard for history, art history, and much of publishing. It comes in two flavors: notes-bibliography (footnotes plus a bibliography — the common one in history) and author-date (similar to APA — used in sciences). The generator produces bibliography entries, the foundation of both systems.
We'll identify it and build your citation.
Chicago format examples
Martin, Robert C. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Prentice Hall, 2008.
In-text(Martin 2008)
Rasch, Björn, and Jan Born. "About sleep's role in memory." Physiological Reviews 93, no. 2 (2013): 681-766. https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.00032.2012.
In-text(Rasch and Born 2013)
Alvarez, Maria. "How memory consolidation works during sleep." Science Daily. March 18, 2024. https://www.sciencedaily.com/memory-consolidation-sleep.
In-text(Alvarez 2024)
The Chicago bibliography formula
Author Last, First. “Title of Article.” Journal Name Volume, no. Issue (Year): pages. DOI or URL.
Chicago reads more like prose than APA or MLA: the first author is inverted, additional authors appear in natural order, titles take Title Case, and the year sits in parentheses before the page range for journal articles. Books end with the publisher and year; websites include the full date and URL.
Notes vs. bibliography entries
In the notes-bibliography system, the same source appears in two forms. The footnote is sentence-like with commas — Björn Rasch and Jan Born, "About Sleep's Role in Memory," Physiological Reviews 93, no. 2 (2013): 685. The bibliography entry is the inverted, period-separated form the generator produces. A handy shortcut: the bibliography entry has everything the footnote needs — just un-invert the name and swap most periods for commas.
When Chicago is the right choice
If your field is history or the humanities and your instructor mentions footnotes, you want Chicago notes-bibliography. If you're in the sciences and the instructions say Chicago, it's usually author-date. When in doubt, ask — the difference is structural, not cosmetic. Either way the bibliography entries here are correct, and the Bibliography Builder titles the page "Bibliography" and alphabetizes it per Chicago.
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Go Premium — $5/monthFrequently asked questions
- Is this Chicago 17th edition?
- Yes — formatting follows the current Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition) bibliography conventions.
- Chicago or Turabian — what's the difference?
- Turabian is Chicago adapted for students — same citation rules, simplified paper formatting. A correct Chicago citation is a correct Turabian citation.
- Does the generator create footnotes?
- It produces bibliography entries. The footnote form uses the same information with the author un-inverted and commas instead of periods — see the notes vs. bibliography section above for the pattern.
- How does Chicago cite websites?
- Author, "Page Title," Site Name, full date, URL. If there's no publication date, Chicago uses an access date instead. The generator detects what's available and formats accordingly.