Chicago Notes-Bibliography is the citation system most humanities writers know best. History monographs, art-history articles, classics books, religious-studies dissertations, and music-theory papers nearly all use it. If your discipline reads primary sources closely, footnotes the texture of its argument, and pairs that with a comprehensive bibliography, this is the system built for the job.
The canonical reference is the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2024. CMOS keeps a public companion at chicagomanualofstyle.org with a Q&A archive and free articles. The full Manual is available to subscribers online and in print. This blog post is an orientation. It is not a rulebook and does not replace the Manual when you need a canonical answer.
Where Chicago Notes-Bibliography came from and who uses it
The University of Chicago Press published the first edition of A Manual of Style in 1906. Notes-Bibliography is the older of the Manual’s two citation systems and the one most readers think of when they think of Chicago. It carries the heritage of footnoted scholarship: an argument that progresses in the main text while supporting evidence, alternative readings, and bibliographic detail unfold in numbered notes beneath.
Disciplines that typically use Chicago Notes-Bibliography include history, art history, classics, archaeology, religious studies, philosophy (in many departments), musicology, theater studies, and large parts of literary studies that prefer Chicago over MLA. Many history journals also use Chicago Notes-Bibliography. If your discipline is one of these, the system is probably already the local norm.
The mechanics: spelling, punctuation, and usage
The mechanics rules of Chicago Notes-Bibliography are identical to those of Chicago Author-Date. Both systems share the same Manual chapters on grammar, usage, numbers, and punctuation. Only the citation system differs.
American spelling is the default, with Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as the tiebreaker. American punctuation places commas and periods inside closing quotation marks and uses the serial comma. Headline-style capitalization is used for book, journal, and article titles in running text and in notes and the bibliography, exactly as in Author-Date. Italic is used for book and journal titles. Quotation marks for article and chapter titles.
The citation system, at a glance
Notes-Bibliography is a two-part system. In the running text, the writer adds a superscript number at the end of the sentence (or the relevant clause), and a numbered note carries the citation, either at the foot of the page or grouped at the end of the document. The first time you cite a source, the note carries the full citation. Every subsequent time you cite the same source, the note carries a shortened citation that names the author and a short version of the title.
The bibliography sits at the end of the document, alphabetical by first author surname, formatted with a hanging indent. The bibliography is required for most academic work, even though every cited source has appeared in full at least once in the notes; the bibliography lets a reader see the full list at a glance.
The notes
First full citation
The first time a source is cited, the note carries the author name in normal order (first name first), the title, the publication information, and the specific page or pages being cited. Pieces are separated by commas rather than periods. The note ends with a period.
Examples below. Sources are invented for illustration.
- Book, first full citation: 1. Mara Stein, Quiet Revisions: Editing as a Craft (Bracewell Press, 2019), 47.
- Journal article, first full citation: 2. Adaeze C. Okonkwo, “Reading between the Citations,” Journal of Humanistic Inquiry 14, no. 2 (2022): 121–44, https://doi.org/10.1234/jhi.2022.047.
- Chapter in an edited book, first full citation: 3. Jiwon Choi, “On Voice,” in The Shape of Scholarly Prose, ed. Mara Stein (Bracewell Press, 2021), 88–112.
- Website article, first full citation: 4. Riya Patel, “Form and Feeling in Recent Criticism,” Modern Letters Review, March 14, 2022, https://example.org/mlr/12345.
Shortened citations
Every subsequent citation of the same source uses a shortened form: the author surname, a short version of the title, and the page being cited.
- Book, shortened citation: 5. Stein, Quiet Revisions, 122.
- Journal article, shortened citation: 6. Okonkwo, “Reading between the Citations,” 130.
When two consecutive notes cite the same source and the same passage, recent CMOS recommends a repeated shortened citation rather than ibid. The repeat is more durable when notes get reordered during editing.
Multiple authors in a note
For two authors, both names appear in the notes and the bibliography. For three or more authors, a note gives only the first author name followed by et al., in the full note and the shortened note alike. The bibliography lists up to six authors; for more than six, it lists the first three followed by et al.
The bibliography
The bibliography starts on a new page after the body of the document with the heading “Bibliography” centered at the top. Entries are alphabetical by first author surname, formatted with a hanging indent. Author names are inverted (surname first) in the bibliography, in contrast with the notes, where the first author appears in natural order.
Each bibliography entry carries the same core elements, who, what, where, and when, with periods between the major divisions. The bibliography entry contains the same information as the first full note, but reorganized: author surname-first, the year near the end (after the publisher for a book, after the volume and issue for an article), and elements separated by periods rather than commas.
Examples to internalize
Four sample bibliography entries. The same sources used in the note examples above appear here in bibliography form. All authors and works are invented.
- Book: Stein, Mara. Quiet Revisions: Editing as a Craft. Bracewell Press, 2019.
- Journal article: Okonkwo, Adaeze C. “Reading between the Citations.” Journal of Humanistic Inquiry 14, no. 2 (2022): 121–44. https://doi.org/10.1234/jhi.2022.047.
- Chapter in an edited book: Choi, Jiwon. “On Voice.” In The Shape of Scholarly Prose, edited by Mara Stein, 88–112. Bracewell Press, 2021.
- Website article: Patel, Riya. “Form and Feeling in Recent Criticism.” Modern Letters Review, March 14, 2022. https://example.org/mlr/12345.
Things to remember about the bibliography
- Alphabetical order by first author surname; secondary sort by title when an author has multiple entries.
- Author surname first in bibliography entries (unlike notes, where the first author appears in natural order).
- Hanging indent on every entry.
- Periods separate the major divisions (rather than commas, which separate elements within a note).
- Headline-style capitalization for both book and article titles.
- DOIs as URLs when available, with the https://doi.org/ prefix.
- No place of publication for books. CMOS 18 no longer requires it; the publisher and year are enough.
What RightMyWork does with Chicago Notes-Bibliography
When you pick Chicago Notes-Bibliography on the upload screen, the editor applies CMOS 18 Notes-Bibliography conventions across your document. Notes are reviewed for first-full versus shortened citation patterns, including the recognition of repeated sources and the conversion to the shortened form on subsequent appearances. Bibliography entries are reviewed for author inversion, italic on the right elements, and consistency with the notes.
Every change lands as a tracked change in Word, so you can accept or reject each one, and unusual source types surface a query rather than an opinionated rewrite.
Where to go from here
For the rules in their canonical form, the CMOS Q&A and online articles are the best free resource, and the printed Chicago Manual of Style 18th edition is the definitive reference. Both are produced by the people who define the style.
When you are ready to apply Chicago Notes-Bibliography to your draft, the upload form on the homepage is one click away. Your first 20,000 words are free as a preview (up to 4 documents). Unlock a document for $10, or edit everything on a plan.