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Turabian 9th edition

Free Turabian citation generator, 9th edition

Paste a URL, ISBN or DOI and get a Turabian style citation in seconds. Chicago's rules in their student-paper form, with footnotes and a bibliography.

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Choose from the left. Website, book, journal, YouTube. It changes what we look for and how we format it.
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Drop in a URL, ISBN, DOI or title. Hit Cite. We check academic databases first, then AI fills in the rest.
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When you use Turabian 9th edition

Turabian is not a separate invention. Kate Turabian ran the dissertation office at the University of Chicago for decades, and her Manual for Writers condensed the enormous Chicago Manual of Style into a handbook sized for students. The 9th edition is current, and when a history or theology course says cite in Turabian, it means Chicago citation rules plus student paper formatting.

Like Chicago, Turabian offers two systems. Notes and bibliography, with numbered footnotes and an alphabetical bibliography, is what humanities courses nearly always want. The author-date alternative, with citations like (Brown 2021, 87), appears mostly in social science settings. Everything below covers notes and bibliography, and the generator output drops straight into the bibliography.

The practical difference from Chicago is not the citations, which are identical, but the paper itself. Turabian specifies things the Chicago Manual leaves to publishers: title page layout, margins, page numbers, heading levels. So build your citations here, and check your course guide for the title page rules.

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.

In-text citations

Parenthetical: Notes and bibliography Turabian does not cite in parentheses. A superscript number in the text points to a footnote at the bottom of the page.
Narrative: The first note for a source is full: Charles Brown, The History of Everything (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 87. Later notes shorten to Brown, History of Everything, 92.

If your course uses Turabian author-date instead, citations look like (Brown 2021, 87) with a reference list, the same as Chicago author-date.

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Mistakes people make in Turabian 9th edition

COMMON SLIP
Treating Turabian and Chicago as two different citation styles and hunting for differences.
WHAT TO DO
The citations are the same system. Turabian adds student paper formatting, not new citation rules. If a source works in Chicago notes and bibliography, it works in Turabian.
COMMON SLIP
Using bibliography formatting inside footnotes.
WHAT TO DO
Footnotes use normal name order and commas with publication details in parentheses. The bibliography inverts the name and separates blocks with periods. They carry the same facts in different clothes.
COMMON SLIP
Repeating the full footnote every time a source comes back.
WHAT TO DO
Only the first note is full. After that, use the short form of author last name, shortened title, page. The 9th edition prefers short forms over ibid., though ibid. is still allowed for consecutive notes.
COMMON SLIP
Skipping the bibliography because every source already has a full first footnote.
WHAT TO DO
Most instructors want both notes and a final alphabetical bibliography. Short papers sometimes get an exemption, but that is the instructor's call, not a rule you can assume.

Questions students actually ask

Is Turabian the same as Chicago style?
For citations, yes. Turabian is the student version of the Chicago Manual of Style, written by Kate Turabian for papers, theses and dissertations. The footnote and bibliography formats are identical. What Turabian adds is guidance on the paper itself, like title pages, margins and headings.
How do I cite a website in Turabian?
Bibliography: Author Last, First. "Title of Page." Site Name. Month Day, Year. URL. Footnote: First Last, "Title of Page," Site Name, Month Day, Year, URL. When there is no publication date, give your access date, like Accessed March 14, 2026, in its place.
Should I use ibid. in Turabian 9th edition?
You can, but the current edition leans toward shortened citations instead: Brown, History of Everything, 92. Short forms survive editing better, because ibid. breaks the moment another note lands between two citations of the same work.
Which Turabian system do I want, notes or author-date?
If the course is in history, theology, literature or the arts, it is almost certainly notes and bibliography. Author-date shows up in social science courses that like Chicago but want APA-style citations. When the syllabus does not say, notes and bibliography is the safe default for Turabian.
Is this Turabian generator free?
Yes, along with the other nine styles on the site. No account, no cap, funded by light ads.

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