Free Chicago Citation Generator
Build accurate Chicago 17th edition citations in seconds, in either system: footnote plus bibliography for the humanities, or author-date for the sciences. Paste a DOI or title and the generator retrieves the real metadata from Crossref, then formats the bibliography entry, the full first note and the shortened note together.
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How to create a Chicago citation in three steps
Find your source
Paste a DOI, a doi.org link or the paper's title and the generator pulls the real metadata from Crossref's open database of 160+ million scholarly records. Books, chapters and websites can be entered manually.
Check the details
Open the source details to verify authors, year, volume and pages, the thirty-second habit that keeps a reference list accurate. Every field is editable before you copy.
Copy in Chicago 17
Copy the reference entry with italics intact for Word or Google Docs, plus every in-text form: parenthetical, narrative and quotation variants, ready to paste.
Why this Chicago generator is different
Both Chicago systems
Notes and bibliography or author-date, switched with one click. Most generators quietly offer only one; your department's choice should not depend on your tool's.
Note, shortened note, entry
The full first footnote, the shortened repeat-citation note and the bibliography entry are generated together, each with its own copy button.
Real records, not guesses
Lookups query Crossref, where publishers register their own metadata, so authors, volume, year and DOI come from the source's actual record.
Italics survive the paste
Copy places rich and plain text on the clipboard together: journal and book titles arrive in Word or Google Docs already italicized.
Chicago 17: one manual, two ways of citing
The Chicago Manual of Style is the oldest of the major style guides, published continuously since 1906, and the most comprehensive: it governs everything from hyphenation to book design. Its citation chapters offer two distinct systems, and the first decision any Chicago writer makes is which one their discipline uses.
Notes and bibliography is the humanities system. Citations live in footnotes or endnotes, which keeps the prose unbroken, lets a single note cite three sources and add an aside, and suits fields where sources are discussed as much as reported. The bibliography then lists every source alphabetically. Author-date is the science-facing alternative: (Chen 2023) in the text, a reference list at the end, structurally close to APA but with Chicago's own punctuation, capitalization and author rules.
The 17th edition, current since 2017, made one change every student notices: ibid. is out of favour. Repeat citations now take a shortened note, surname, short title, page, which stays unambiguous when notes move during revision. The generator builds all three forms, and the anatomy display below walks through where each element goes and why the note and the bibliography entry disagree about name order.
For worked examples across source types, see our Chicago 17 citation guide and its companion Turabian guide for theses. Comparing styles? The main citation generator formats the same source six ways side by side.
Anatomy of a Chicago citation
One journal article, taken apart. Hover any coloured part of the bibliography entry, the notes, or the author-date forms to see what it is and the 17th edition rule behind it.
Chen, Maya R., and Liam O'Connor. "Sleep Quality and Academic Performance in First-Year University Students." Journal of Applied Learning Science 115, no. 4 (2023): 512-528. https://doi.org/10.1234/jals.2023.0158.
Chicago has two systems. Notes and bibliography, shown here, is standard in history and the humanities; author-date, in the last two rows below, mirrors the sciences.
1. Maya R. Chen and Liam O'Connor, "Sleep Quality and Academic Performance in First-Year University Students," Journal of Applied Learning Science 115, no. 4 (2023): 517.
2. Chen and O'Connor, "Sleep Quality," 519.
Chicago 17 recommends the shortened note for every repeat citation, in place of ibid.
(Chen and O'Connor 2023, 517)
Chen and O'Connor (2023) found that...
Hover or tap any coloured part for what it is and the rule behind it.
The Chicago rules the generator applies for you
Six conventions that separate confident Chicago citations from improvised ones.
Two systems, one manual
Notes and bibliography for the humanities, author-date for the sciences. Never mix them in one document: a footnote system does not also carry (Chen 2023) citations.
Notes read, bibliographies list
Full notes run given-name first with commas and parentheses; bibliography entries invert the first author and separate elements with periods. Same facts, different grammar.
Shortened notes over ibid.
From the second citation onwards: surname, short title of up to about four words, page. Chicago 17 prefers this even for back-to-back citations of the same source.
Headline capitalization
Titles take headline style: every principal word capitalized, quotation marks for articles and chapters, italics for journals and books.
Unlabelled volume, labelled issue
The volume follows the journal name bare; the issue takes no.: Journal of Applied Learning Science 115, no. 4 (2023). The year sits in parentheses after them.
Notes cite pages, bibliographies cite ranges
A footnote points at the page you are quoting; the bibliography entry records the article's full extent. The generator keeps the two straight for you.
Chicago bibliography examples by source type
Bibliography entries for four source types in the notes system. Switch the widget to author-date to see the science-facing equivalents.
Journal article
Chen, Maya R., and Liam O'Connor. "Sleep quality and academic performance in first-year university students." Journal of Applied Learning Science 115, no. 4 (2023): 512-528. https://doi.org/10.1234/jals.2023.0158.
Book
Chen, Maya R. The Science of Student Sleep. 2nd ed. Academic Press, 2021.
Book chapter
Chen, Maya R. "Sleep and memory consolidation." In Handbook of Learning Science, edited by Liam O'Connor and Sofia Alvarez, 301-322. Academic Press, 2022.
Website
World Health Organization. "Sleep and adolescent health." WHO Fact Sheets. Accessed 14 July 2026. https://example.org/sleep.
All four are produced by the generator above; every author, title and DOI in them is invented for illustration.
Chicago citation generator FAQs
Notes and bibliography or author-date: which do I need?
What does the generator produce for the notes system?
Does Chicago still use ibid.?
Is this generator free and private?
Notes in order. Now polish the argument they support.
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