Chicago Style: Basics

Shortened Notes

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In Chicago Style, subsequent citations are formatted as shortened notes:

• The basic structure of the first shortened citation consists of the author(s)’s last name(s), the title of the work (usually shortened if more than four words), and the page number(s).
• The 18^th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style discourages the use of Ibid. Instead, the CMOS recommends the use of further shortened citations that consist of the author(s)’ last name(s) and the page number(s).
• Your readers will need to be able to identify the correct works; therefore, if you are using multiple works by one author, you will have to differentiate between the works.
  • You can use an even shorter version of each title. In the book example below, if you had two or more sources by Tomblin, the further shortened version of the citation could be:
    • Tomblin, Civil War, 32.

Examples

Book

First Note:

2. Barbara Brooks Tomblin, The Civil War on the Mississippi: Union Sailors, Gunboat Captains, and the Campaign to Control the River (The University Press of Kentucky, 2016), 15-24.

Shortened Notes:

7. Tomblin, Civil War on the Mississippi, 50.

8. Tomblin, 50.

9. Tomblin, 63-6.

 

Journal

First Note:

3. Mario Graca Moura and Antonio Almodovar, “Political Economy and the ‘Modern View’ as Reflected in the History of Economic Thought,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 23, no. 1 (2016): 61.

Shortened Notes:

5. Moura and Almodovar, “Political Economy,” 63.

6. Moura and Almodovar, 62-3.

Other

First Note:

6. Vaitea Cowan, “How Green Hydrogen Could End the Fossil Fuel Era,” TED Talk, Vancouver, BC, April 2022, 9 min., 15 sec., https://www.ted.com/talks/vaitea_cowan_how_green_hydrogen_could_end_the_fossil_fuel_era.

Shortened Notes:

9.  Cowan, “Green Hydrogen,” at 6:09–17.

10. Cowan, at 3:10-5.

 

Ibid.

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The 18^th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style discourages the use of Ibid. Instead, the CMOS recommends the use of shortened citations (see the examples above). However, if your professor allows it, Ibid. is used:

• When you cite the same source directly after another. 
• It can be used by itself or with different page numbers.

Example:

10. Moura and Almodovar, “Political Economy,” 63.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., 62.

13. Tomblin, Civil War on the Mississippi, 50.

14. Ibid., 56-62.

15. Moura and Almodovar, “Political Economy,” 62-3.