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Chicago 17th edition

Free Chicago citation generator, 17th edition

Paste a URL, ISBN or DOI and get a Chicago style bibliography entry in seconds. Built on the notes and bibliography system that history and humanities courses use.

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Paste a URL — e.g. https://bbc.com/article

Here is how it works
1
Pick your source type
Choose from the left. Website, book, journal, YouTube. It changes what we look for and how we format it.
2
Paste and cite
Drop in a URL, ISBN, DOI or title. Hit Cite. We check academic databases first, then AI fills in the rest.
3
Switch styles freely
APA, MLA, Chicago and more. Switch any time and your citation regenerates automatically in the new format.

When you use Chicago 17th edition

Chicago style comes from the Chicago Manual of Style, now in its 17th edition, and it is the standard in history, art history, philosophy and much of publishing. It is older and more detailed than APA or MLA, which is why the manual itself is over a thousand pages. You need about five of those pages worth of rules for a normal student paper.

Chicago actually contains two different systems. Notes and bibliography uses numbered footnotes or endnotes plus a bibliography at the end, and it is what humanities courses almost always mean when they say Chicago. Author-date looks like APA, with citations such as (Smith 2023, 45) in the text, and shows up in some social science courses. This page and the generator above produce the notes and bibliography form.

One habit that saves a lot of cleanup: bibliography entries and footnotes format the same information differently. The bibliography inverts the author name and separates blocks with periods. The footnote keeps the name in normal order, uses commas, and wraps the publication details in parentheses. Mixing the two forms is the most common Chicago mistake there is.

The formats, with real examples

Paste your source into the tool above and it fills these in for you. If you would rather see the pattern, here is exactly what each one looks like.

Website (bibliography entry)
Author Last, First. "Title of Page." Site Name. Month Day, Year. URL.
EXAMPLESmith, Jane. "How Climate Change Affects Oceans." National Geographic. March 14, 2023. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/oceans.
Book (bibliography entry)
Author Last, First. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, Year.
EXAMPLEBrown, Charles. The History of Everything. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
Journal article (bibliography entry)
Author Last, First. "Article Title." Journal Name Volume, no. Issue (Year): pages.
EXAMPLEGarcia, Maria. "Rewriting the Gothic." Studies in the Novel 54, no. 2 (2022): 145-63.
The same book as a footnote
First Last, Title of Book (Place: Publisher, Year), page.
EXAMPLECharles Brown, The History of Everything (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 87.

In-text citations

Parenthetical: Chicago notes and bibliography does not use parenthetical citations. A superscript number in the text points to a footnote at the bottom of the page.
Narrative: First citation of a work gets a full footnote. Later citations shorten to author last name, short title, and page: Brown, History of Everything, 92.

The author-date variant of Chicago does use parentheses, like (Brown 2021, 87), but only use it if your course explicitly asks for author-date.

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Mistakes people make in Chicago 17th edition

COMMON SLIP
Using the bibliography format inside footnotes, with inverted names and periods.
WHAT TO DO
Footnotes read like a sentence: normal name order, commas between parts, publication details in parentheses. The inverted, period-separated form belongs only in the bibliography.
COMMON SLIP
Writing ibid. for every repeated citation out of habit.
WHAT TO DO
The 17th edition discourages ibid. and prefers the short form instead: Brown, History of Everything, 92. Short forms stay clear even when notes move around during editing.
COMMON SLIP
Dropping the place of publication from book citations because APA 7 did.
WHAT TO DO
Chicago still includes it. A book entry keeps Place: Publisher, Year, like Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
COMMON SLIP
Numbering footnotes per page or reusing a number for a repeated source.
WHAT TO DO
Notes are numbered in one continuous sequence through the whole paper, and every citation gets a fresh number even if the source repeats.

Questions students actually ask

What is the difference between Chicago notes and bibliography and author-date?
Notes and bibliography cites with numbered footnotes plus a bibliography, and it is the default in history and the humanities. Author-date cites in parentheses in the text, like (Brown 2021, 87), with a reference list, and appears in some sciences and social sciences. Check the assignment; if it just says Chicago, use notes and bibliography.
How do I cite a website in Chicago style?
Bibliography entry: Author Last, First. "Title of Page." Site Name. Month Day, Year. URL. If the page has no publication date, use your access date instead, like Accessed March 14, 2026. In a footnote the same information runs in normal order with commas.
Do I need both footnotes and a bibliography?
Usually yes, footnotes for each citation plus a bibliography listing every source alphabetically. Some instructors accept footnotes alone for short papers, since the first footnote to each work already carries full details. Ask before you skip the bibliography.
How is Turabian different from Chicago?
Turabian is Chicago packaged for students. Kate Turabian condensed the manual into a student handbook with the same citation rules plus paper formatting guidance. A Turabian citation and a Chicago citation look the same, so if your course says Turabian you can use the Turabian generator here and everything carries over.
Is this Chicago generator free?
Yes, like every style on the site. No account, no limit. Paste your source above and the citation comes out in the bibliography form, ready for your works list.

Keep going

Turabian generator →APA generator →MLA generator →Guide: write a bibliography →
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