Chicago style is the reference system most often set for history, literature, philosophy and area-studies coursework — the kind of work where footnotes carry commentary as well as citations. It comes in two flavours: notes-bibliography, which pairs footnotes with a bibliography, and author-date, which resembles Harvard. This generator produces bibliography entries in the notes-bibliography form.
Fill in what the source shows and the entry is assembled in your browser. Missing details are marked so you can see exactly what still needs checking.
Notes-bibliography is the humanities form: a superscript number in the text points to a footnote, and a full bibliography closes the work. Author-date is the sciences form and looks much like Harvard, with (Author Year) in the running text. Departments rarely accept a mix, so settle which one your course wants before you start writing.
This tool produces bibliography entries. A bibliography entry inverts the first author's name for alphabetising and separates elements with full stops; a footnote keeps the name in natural order and uses commas. The two are not interchangeable.
Pattern: Surname, First Name. Title of the Book. Publisher, Year.
Example: Regmi, Mahesh Chandra. Landownership in Nepal. University of California Press, 1976.
For an edited collection, add the editor after the title. For a chapter, the chapter title goes in quotation marks and the book title follows after "In".
Pattern: Surname, First Name. "Title of the Article." Journal Name volume, no. issue (Year): pages.
Example: Gurung, Harka. "Ethnic Geography of Nepal." Contributions to Nepalese Studies 25, no. 1 (1998): 1–20.
Note the punctuation: the volume number follows the journal name with no comma, the issue is prefixed with "no.", the year sits in brackets, and page numbers follow a colon.
History coursework in Nepal often draws on gazettes, survey records, census volumes and material held at the National Archives. Chicago handles these as reports: the issuing body is the author, the document title follows, and the place and year of issue complete the entry.
Add the collection or file reference at the end where a reader would otherwise be unable to locate the document. Chicago is deliberately flexible here — the test is whether someone else could find what you found.
The most frequent slip is inverting every author's name. Only the first author is inverted for alphabetical order; co-authors stay in natural order — Regmi, Mahesh Chandra, and Harka Gurung.
The second is repeating a full footnote for a source already cited. After the first full note, Chicago uses a shortened form: surname, short title, page number.
Chicago is standard in history, literature, philosophy, religion and area studies. Its notes-bibliography form suits work where footnotes carry discussion as well as references.
A bibliography entry inverts the first author's name and separates elements with full stops. A footnote keeps names in natural order, uses commas, and ends with the specific page cited.
It generates bibliography entries. Build your footnote from the same details, keeping the author's name in natural order and adding the page you are citing.
Use n.d. in place of the year. Do not estimate a date — if the source shows none, say so rather than guessing.
Yes. It is free, browser-based, and nothing you type is uploaded or stored.