As a student, academic writing requires your assignment or project to follow proper formatting guidelines. But it’s not as difficult a task as it might initially sound. To structure a project that follows a proper Chicago referencing style, you need to be aware of what it is and what the steps are chronologically. So, in this blog, we will be going through all the necessary steps to follow in your project for a proper Chicago referencing style.
What is Chicago Style Referencing?
The Chicago style referencing is a majorly known and used system for citing sources and formatting academic papers. It is used as a guideline for structure, citation and presentation in academic writing. The Chicago style referencing is particularly used in humanities, social sciences, and history for its thorough structuring and flexibility. It offers two primary systems of citation:
- The notes and Bibliography system is commonly used in history, literature, and arts.
- The author-date system is commonly used in social sciences and sciences.
Page Layout Guidelines
Title Page
On the title page, you must include the following information, which is centre-aligned and double-spaced.
- Title of the paper
- Your name
- Course name and number
- Instructor’s or your Professor’s name
- Submission date
Page Numbers
Do not forget to place the page numbers in the top right corner. Make sure to start numbering from the first page of the project and not the title page, because it should not not be numbered.
Line Spacing
Throughout your project, be sure to double-space the text, including the bibliography and block quotes, if there are any. For the footnotes, use a single space, and remember to add a blank line between each.
Margins & Fonts
The preferred font for Chicago Style Referencing is Times New Roman, and the size is 12pt. For some cases, fonts like Arial or Calibri may be acceptable in some cases, so just get it checked with your professor or instructor once, before you make a choice and go with it.
Footnotes & Endnotes
The Chicago style of referencing also uses footnotes and endnotes. So, you need to be aware of all the following footnote and endnote guidelines before structuring your project.
- Footnotes will be at the bottom of the page, and endnotes will go at the end of the paper.
- The very first citation of any source will contain all the details related to it, while the second same citation will use a shortened format.
For example:
Full note – ¹Max Black, Title of the Book (City: Publisher, Year), page number
Shortened Note – ¹Black, Title of the Book, page number
Bibliography
Remember to use a hanging indent for each bibliography entry. You must list all the sources alphabetically by the author’s last name.
Example: Black, Max. Title of the Book. City: Publisher, Year.
Author-Date
The Chicago referencing style uses parenthetical citations like the following.
Reference list: You must include all the source details in a separate section titled References. As discussed previously in the Bibliography section, it should be listed alphabetically and formatted with a hanging indent.
Additional Tips
While now you know what most of the Chicago referencing style means and what the guideline suggests you to do for your project, a few extra pointers will help you get that perfect grade at your University. Or if you’re preparing your project as a professional, you’ll need not to get your paper rechecked and revised repeatedly. So make sure you remember these tips while writing your paper.
- Italicize book, journal, and research paper titles
- Use quotation marks for chapter titles
- In citations, pay extra attention to punctuation rules
- Throughout all the pages, use a consistent format for headings to structure all the pages
- For quotes that exceed five lines, use block quotations
- Also, ensure to indent the block 0.5 inches single-space it
Conclusion
While we have compiled the guidelines in the most coherent way possible in this blog, you might make errors or mistakes that are unavoidable. Since there are so many rules to follow, there’s always something that goes wrong. Since now you have reached the end of this blog, before submitting your academic paper, we suggest you read this blog again while proofreading and finalizing. Here are some of the mistakes that many students/researchers make which you must avoid at all costs:
- Make sure to put works cited at the top of the bibliography that are not Chicago style. That is MLA style
- Notes use a first-line indent, and the bibliography uses a hanging indent
- In the notes, do not reuse numbers as in notes each citation gets a new number
- The bibliography format uses “last name, first name”, while the note format uses “ first name, last name”
While structuring and writing a project overall, one may often forget to remember and use some of the guidelines in the Chicago Style referencing, and it is not your fault. Just make sure to recheck to see if everything and every page is all right before submission. All the best with your paper! If you need help writing your project, you can check out our Digi Assignment Help website for further instructions.
