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This guide will help you cite sources in Turabian format, the student-focused adaptation of Chicago style used for research papers, theses and dissertations.
Every example below is copied from the University of Chicago Press's own free quick guides — the Notes and Bibliography sample citations and the Author-Date sample citations — so you can check each one against the source.
The Official Source
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations by Kate L. Turabian, 9th edition (2018), is published by the University of Chicago Press. Often called simply "Turabian," it is the student-focused companion to The Chicago Manual of Style and aligns with CMOS 17th edition.
The Press publishes free quick guides at chicagomanualofstyle.org/turabian. They point you to chapters 16 and 17 of Turabian for notes-bibliography style and chapters 18 and 19 for author-date style.
Quick Overview
Turabian offers two citation systems:
- Notes-Bibliography — footnotes or endnotes plus a bibliography (humanities)
- Author-Date — parenthetical citations plus a reference list (sciences and social sciences)
Check with your instructor which system to use. This guide covers both.
Notes-Bibliography Style
Used in literature, history and the arts. Citations appear as footnotes or endnotes, with a bibliography at the end. The first note gives the full citation; later notes use a shortened form.
Book
Notes:
-
Katie Kitamura, A Separation (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017), 25.
-
Sharon Sassler and Amanda Jayne Miller, Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 114.
Shortened notes:
-
Kitamura, Separation, 91–92.
-
Sassler and Miller, Cohabitation Nation, 205.
Bibliography entries:
Kitamura, Katie. A Separation. New York: Riverhead Books, 2017.
Sassler, Sharon, and Amanda Jayne Miller. Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017.
Note the difference in shape: a note uses commas and parentheses and cites the specific page; a bibliography entry uses periods and inverts only the first author's name.
Chapter in an Edited Book
Note:
- Mary Rowlandson, "The Narrative of My Captivity," in The Making of the American Essay, ed. John D'Agata (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2016), 19–20.
Bibliography entry:
Rowlandson, Mary. "The Narrative of My Captivity." In The Making of the American Essay, edited by John D'Agata, 19–56. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2016.
In the note cite the specific pages; in the bibliography give the page range of the whole chapter. A note abbreviates to "ed."; a bibliography entry spells out "edited by."
Journal Article
Notes:
-
Ashley Hope Pérez, "Material Morality and the Logic of Degrees in Diderot's Le neveu de Rameau," Modern Philology 114, no. 4 (May 2017): 874, https://doi.org/10.1086/689836.
-
Shao-Hsun Keng, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem, "Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality," Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 9–10, https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.
Bibliography entries:
Keng, Shao-Hsun, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem. "Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality." Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.
Pérez, Ashley Hope. "Material Morality and the Logic of Degrees in Diderot's Le neveu de Rameau." Modern Philology 114, no. 4 (May 2017): 872–98. https://doi.org/10.1086/689836.
The quick guide's rule on authors: "If there are four or more authors, list up to ten in the bibliography; in a note, list only the first, followed by et al."
Thesis or Dissertation
Note:
- Guadalupe Navarro-Garcia, "Integrating Social Justice Values in Educational Leadership: A Study of African American and Black University Presidents" (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2016), 44, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Bibliography entry:
Navarro-Garcia, Guadalupe. "Integrating Social Justice Values in Educational Leadership: A Study of African American and Black University Presidents." PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2016. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Website Content
Note:
- "Privacy Policy," Privacy & Terms, Google, last modified April 17, 2017, https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.
Bibliography entry:
Google. "Privacy Policy." Privacy & Terms. Last modified April 17, 2017. https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.
Note that the website's name — Google — is set in roman with no italics, and the page title takes quotation marks. Where a page carries no date of publication, posting or revision, give an access date instead: the quick guide's other example is "History," Columbia University, accessed May 15, 2017, http://www.columbia.edu/content/history.html. If you cite a policy page like this one, use the revision date shown on the version you actually read. Google's privacy policy is revised regularly and every past version is dated and listed at policies.google.com/privacy/archive — "April 17, 2017" appears there, which is how we checked the quick guide's example. Don't invent a plausible-looking date; a marker can check that list as easily as you can.
Author-Date Style
Used in sciences and social sciences. Citations appear in parentheses in the text, with a reference list at the end. The same works look like this:
Book
Reference list entries:
Kitamura, Katie. 2017. A Separation. New York: Riverhead Books.
Sassler, Sharon, and Amanda Jayne Miller. 2017. Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships. Oakland: University of California Press.
In-text citations:
(Kitamura 2017, 25)
(Sassler and Miller 2017, 114)
Chapter in an Edited Book
Reference list entry:
Rowlandson, Mary. 2016. "The Narrative of My Captivity." In The Making of the American Essay, edited by John D'Agata, 19–56. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.
In-text citation:
(Rowlandson 2016, 19–20)
Journal Article
Reference list entry:
Keng, Shao-Hsun, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem. 2017. "Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality." Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1 (Spring): 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.
In-text citation:
(Keng, Lin, and Orazem 2017, 9–10)
Website Content
Reference list entries:
Google. 2017. "Privacy Policy." Privacy & Terms. Last modified April 17, 2017. https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.
Columbia University. n.d. "History." Accessed May 15, 2017. http://www.columbia.edu/content/history.html.
In-text citations:
(Google 2017)
(Columbia University n.d.)
Where a page has no date, n.d. stands in for the year in both the reference and the in-text citation.
Key Turabian Conventions
- Headline-style capitalization — capitalize the major words in titles (unlike APA's sentence case).
- Italics for books and journals — book and journal titles are italicized; website names are set in roman, as the Google example shows.
- Quotation marks for shorter works — article, chapter and web-page titles take quotation marks.
- Access dates — the quick guide's rule is to give an access date only "for a source that does not list a date of publication, posting, or revision."
- DOIs preferred — "A DOI forms a permanent URL that begins https://doi.org/. This URL is preferable to the URL that appears in your browser's address bar."
- Databases named — where there is no DOI or URL, name the database instead, as in the ProQuest and Project MUSE examples.
- Specific pages in notes, full ranges in lists — a note cites the pages you used; a bibliography or reference-list entry gives the whole article or chapter's range.
Turabian vs. Chicago
| Element | Turabian | Chicago |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Students writing papers, theses and dissertations | Authors, editors and publishers |
| Scope | Research, writing and source citation for student work; paper formatting | Full editorial and publishing reference, including manuscript preparation and production |
| Citation systems | Notes-bibliography and author-date | Notes-bibliography and author-date |
| Alignment | 9th ed. (2018) aligns with CMOS 17th ed. | The source document |
For most student papers the two are interchangeable in their citation forms — the quick guides above are published by the same press and use the same examples. When in doubt for coursework, follow Turabian.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Mixing systems — don't combine notes-bibliography and author-date in the same paper.
- Forgetting shortened notes — after the first full note, use the shortened form.
- Wrong capitalization — Turabian uses headline-style capitalization for titles, not sentence case.
- Missing bibliography entries — a work cited in a note normally needs a matching bibliography entry.
- Italicizing a website's name — the name of a site is roman; only the titles of books, journals and similar standalone works are italicized.
- Adding an access date to everything — include one only when the source carries no publication, posting or revision date.
Who Uses Turabian Style?
Turabian is widely used for undergraduate research papers, master's theses and doctoral dissertations, especially in history, the humanities, and divinity and theology programmes, and it is the usual answer when a course asks students for "Chicago style." Check your department's requirements: paper-format details such as title pages and margins are the kind of thing an institution commonly sets for itself, and its template overrides a general guide.
Further Resources
- Turabian citation quick guides — free sample citations from the University of Chicago Press for both systems.
- Your university library — most publish a Turabian guide tailored to institutional requirements.
Sources Checked
- University of Chicago Press. Turabian Citation Quick Guide: Notes and Bibliography and Author-Date sample citations. Both pages were read in full through Internet Archive snapshots on 22 September 2026, and every example, page number and quoted rule above was checked against them word by word.
- DOIs in the journal-article examples were confirmed against Crossref:
10.1086/689836(Pérez, Modern Philology 114(4), 872–898, 2017) and10.1086/690235(Keng, Lin and Orazem, Journal of Human Capital 11(1), 1–34, 2017). - The Google privacy-policy revision date was confirmed against Google's own archive of policy versions.
