The Chicago Manual of Style, or CMS, is a manuscript preparation format that is mostly adapted to book writing. The Chicago Manual of Style was first published by the University of Chicago Press in 1906 under the title “Manual of Style.” It has since acquired the knick-name “the editor’s bible,” and a 16th edition was published in 2010.
Students and teachers often refer to the “Turabian” style – based on Kate Turabian’s Manual for Writer’s of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 2007 – also published by the University of Chicago Press.
The Chicago Manual of Style features the Notes-Bibliography system and the Author-Date system for citation, the former being preferred in humanities studies and the latter in the social sciences. The complete CMS guidelines, including updates on how to appropriately cite information from emerging media sources such as websites, podcasts and reality television programming can be found at www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.
Guidelines for CMS
– Titles of journals and books are italicized, whereas titles of articles and chapters are placed in quotation marks as in this example,
- “The text should be double-spaced except for block quotations, notes [and references], captions, and long headings [that wrap to two lines], which should be single spaced with a blank space between items” (Turabian 2007, 375).
– The above citation is an example of the “Author-Date” system, also typical of APA Style.
– The older CMS technique of annotating footnotes is to precede them immediately with superscript numerals like footnote numbers in the text, without punctuation, for example,
- 2Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 269-271.
– The Turabian Manual no longer uses this format, but rather uses numerals on the line followed by a period, for example,
- 1. Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 147-149.
Teachers will always specify if a paper should be written in a specific style and students need to be prepared to access and use any of the major style guides.
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