How to Cite a Government Report in Chicago

Chicago (18th edition) formats a government report reference as shown above. A real example, generated by our citation engine:

Or skip the hunt: Paste the report's landing-page URL into the generator, or use Manual Entry with the agency as author. It works out what the source is, fills every field from the source's own record, and is already set to Chicago.

• Author — the agency or department that issued it, written in full
• Report number — on the cover or title page; include it after the title when present
• Year — publication year from the cover or front matter
• The official URL — the agency's own page for the report, not a third-party mirror

• First author inverted, additional authors in natural order
• Titles use Title Case; articles in quotes, containers in italics
• Reads like prose: the year sits in parentheses before the page range for articles
• Pairs with footnotes — the same data in sentence form with commas

• The agency is usually both author and publisher — most styles then drop the repeated name
• Larger hierarchy can be included: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health
• Congressional documents, statutes, and case law have specialized legal-citation formats beyond this pattern

Chicago's notes-bibliography system cites with footnotes: a superscript number in the text pointing to a note with the source details and page. The bibliography entry shown here contains everything the footnote needs — un-invert the author's name and swap most periods for commas to form the note.

No author? The note and bibliography entry begin with the title; alphabetize by it (ignoring A/An/The).

Every in-text citation pairs with a full entry on the Bibliography page, alphabetized by author. Add each citation to your bibliography as you generate it, and the Bibliography Builder assembles and exports the finished page to Word with the title, ordering, and indentation Chicago requires.