Creating a Bibliography (Chicago/Turabian Notes and Bibliography System)

In the Chicago/Turabian Notes and Bibliography (NB) system, the bibliography is an essential component that complements your footnotes or endnotes. It provides a comprehensive, alphabetized list of all the sources you have cited, and sometimes other relevant works you consulted during your research. A well-formatted bibliography allows readers to easily see the breadth of your research and to locate the sources for themselves.

1. Purpose of the Bibliography

• To provide full publication details for every source cited in your notes.
• To offer an organized, alphabetical overview of your research base.
• Optionally (and if specified by your instructor or publisher), to list other relevant works consulted, even if not directly cited in a note (in such cases, a title like "Selected Bibliography" or "Works Consulted" might be used). For most student papers, "Bibliography" includes sources cited.

2. Placement and Title

• Placement: The bibliography begins on a new page at the very end of your paper, after any endnotes (if endnotes are used instead of footnotes).
• Title: The title of the page should be "Bibliography".
• Center the title at the top of the page.
• Do not bold, italicize, underline, or put the title in quotation marks (unless following a specific heading style for a larger work).
• Leave two blank lines (or follow standard double-spacing if your entire paper is double-spaced) between the title "Bibliography" and the first entry.

3. General Formatting Guidelines for the Bibliography Page

• Order of Entries:
  • List entries alphabetically by the author's (or editor's, compiler's, translator's) last name.
  • If a work has no credited author or editor, alphabetize it by the first significant word of its title (ignoring initial articles like "A," "An," or "The").
• Font and Margins: Use the same font and margins as the rest of your paper (e.g., 12-point Times New Roman, 1-inch margins).

4. Formatting Individual Bibliography Entries

• Author Names:
  • The first author's name is inverted: Last Name, First Name Middle Name/Initial.
    Example: Smith, John David.
  • If a source has multiple authors, invert only the first author's name. Subsequent authors are listed in normal order (First Name Last Name), separated by commas, with "and" before the last author.
    Example: Smith, John David, and Jane Alice Doe.
  • For works by the same author(s) listed consecutively, use a 3-em dash (———.) or three hyphens (---.) followed by a period in place of the author’s name(s) for the second and subsequent entries. List these works alphabetically by title.
    Example: Smith, John David. The First Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.
    ———. A Second Volume. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023.
• Indentation (Hanging Indent):
  • Each bibliography entry must use a hanging indent.
  • The first line of the entry is flush with the left margin.
  • Subsequent lines of the same entry are indented by 0.5 inches (or one tab stop).
  • Most word processors have a function to create hanging indents easily (often in the paragraph formatting settings).
• Spacing:
  • Individual entries are generally single-spaced internally.
  • A blank line (or a standard single line space created by pressing Enter once) should appear between the end of one entry and the beginning of the next.
• Punctuation:
  • Major elements within a bibliography entry (e.g., author, title, publication information) are typically separated by periods.
  • Pay close attention to the specific punctuation required for different source types, as this will be detailed in later sections.
• Titles:
  • Titles of longer works (e.g., books, journals) are italicized.
  • Titles of shorter works (e.g., articles, book chapters) are usually enclosed in quotation marks and not italicized (except when they contain a title that would itself be italicized, like a book title within an article title). Use headline-style capitalization for titles.

5. Key Differences from Footnote/Endnote Citations

6. Content: What to Include?

• Sources Cited: Your bibliography must include all the sources you cited in your footnotes or endnotes.
• Works Consulted (Optional): In some cases, particularly for longer research projects, your instructor or publisher might ask for a list of "Works Consulted" or a "Selected Bibliography" which includes sources you found relevant and useful for your research, even if you didn't cite them directly. If you do this, ensure the title of your bibliography reflects this (e.g., "Selected Bibliography"). Always clarify expectations with your instructor or publisher.

7. Visual Consistency

Maintain consistent formatting (indentation, spacing, punctuation style for similar source types) for all entries in your bibliography. This meticulous attention to detail is a hallmark of the Chicago/Turabian style.