Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style is often used to document sources for papers and assignments in the Humanities (e.g., history, fine arts, philosophy, and political science). Check with your instructor to find out which citation style you should use for an assignment.

When teachers ask you to write in "Chicago Style", they are referring to the editorial style that most subjects within Arts and Humanities have adopted to present written material in the field.

Editorial style is a set of rules or guidelines that a publisher observes to ensure clear and consistent presentation of written material. Editorial style  concerns uniform use of such elements as:

• punctuation and abbreviations
• construction of tables
• selection of headings
• citation of references
• presentation of statistics
• as well as many other elements that are a part of every manuscript

The purpose of documentation is to:

• Identify (cite) other people’s ideas and information used within your essay or term paper.
• Indicate the authors or sources of these in a Bibliography at the end of your paper.
• Identify the sources you researched to support your argument.
• Provide all information necessary to enable your readers to find the sources you used.

CMOS Online: The full contents of the 17th edition (the last one!) are available through Library's license.