Free Chicago Citation Generator Notes, Author-Date, One Manual
Two different citation systems live inside one Chicago manual, and a writer has to know which one their discipline expects before typing a single note. This Chicago citation generator builds both from the same lookup: paste a DOI or a title and it returns the bibliography entry, the full first footnote and the shortened note used afterward, all under the 18th edition, in either the notes-and-bibliography system or author-date.
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Building a Chicago citation from one lookup
Enter the DOI or the title
A DOI, a doi.org link or the article title is enough to start. The lookup runs against Crossref, the open registry holding metadata for more than 160 million scholarly records, and the fields are filled from the publisher's own deposit. Books, chapters and web pages are typed in directly.
Confirm the retrieved fields
Expand the record and read the author list, year, volume and page range before you take the entry. Registered metadata is occasionally incomplete or abbreviated, and every field remains editable once the lookup has run.
Take the Chicago 18 entry
The reference list entry travels to Microsoft Word or Google Docs with its italics preserved, and the in-text forms come with it: parenthetical, narrative, and the variant used after a direct quotation.
What sets this Chicago citation generator apart
Notes or author-date, one click apart
Most tools quietly support a single Chicago system, so a switch between notes and author-date usually means starting over by hand. Here the switch is one click, leaving the choice to the department rather than the tool.
Note, shortened note and entry together
The full first footnote, the shortened form used after it, and the bibliography entry all come from the same lookup, each with its own copy button.
Built from Crossref's own records
Author names, volume, year and DOI are read from the publisher's registered metadata rather than reconstructed from memory.
Italics arrive already applied
Copying sends rich and plain text together, so a journal or book title reaches Word or Google Docs italicized without a second pass.
Choosing between Chicago's two citation systems
The Chicago Manual of Style has been in continuous print since 1906, longer than any other major guide, and it covers far more than citation, reaching into hyphenation and book design alike. For referencing specifically, it offers two separate systems, and a writer's discipline usually decides which one applies before they type a word.
Notes and bibliography belongs to the humanities. A citation lives in a footnote or endnote, leaving the sentence itself uninterrupted, and a single note can cite several sources or add a remark of its own; an alphabetical bibliography gathers everything at the end. Author-date belongs to the sciences: (Chen 2023) sits directly in the sentence, backed by a reference list, structurally close to APA but carrying Chicago's own punctuation and capitalization habits.
The 18th edition, current since 2024, keeps the change the 17th made: ibid. is gone, and generations of writers had relied on it. A repeat citation now takes a shortened note instead, surname, short title, page, a form that keeps working even after a revision moves the notes around. This generator builds the full note, the shortened note and the bibliography entry together, so the difference between the two never has to be worked out by hand.
For worked examples across source types, see our Chicago 18 citation guide and its companion Turabian guide for theses. The main citation generator sets the same source against five other styles at once.
A Chicago citation, note by note
One journal article, broken into its footnote, its bibliography entry and its author-date form. Hover any tinted piece to see its name and the 18th-edition rule that placed it.
Chen, Maya R., and Liam O'Connor. "Sleep Quality and Academic Performance in First-Year University Students." Journal of Applied Learning Science 115, no. 4 (2023): 512-528. https://doi.org/10.1234/jals.2023.0158.
Chicago has two systems. Notes and bibliography, shown here, is standard in history and the humanities; author-date, in the last two rows below, mirrors the sciences.
1. Maya R. Chen and Liam O'Connor, "Sleep Quality and Academic Performance in First-Year University Students," Journal of Applied Learning Science 115, no. 4 (2023): 517.
2. Chen and O'Connor, "Sleep Quality," 519.
Chicago 18 recommends the shortened note for every repeat citation, in place of ibid.
(Chen and O'Connor 2023, 517)
Chen and O'Connor (2023) found that...
Hover any coloured part for what it is and the rule behind it.
Six Chicago habits worth knowing before you paste
The details that separate a citation built to the current manual from one still leaning on an older habit.
One document, one system
A manuscript commits to either notes and bibliography or author-date; footnotes and (Chen 2023) citations never share the same pages.
A note reads, a bibliography lists
The full first footnote runs given name first, joined by commas and parentheses. The bibliography entry inverts the lead author and separates its parts with periods instead.
Shortened notes replace ibid.
From the second citation of a source onward, Chicago calls for surname, short title, page, even when that source was just cited. Ibid. is no longer the recommended shorthand.
Titles take headline capitalization
Every principal word is capitalized. Quotation marks wrap an article or chapter title; italics wrap a journal or book title.
The volume stands bare, the issue carries no.
A journal's volume number follows its name with nothing in front of it; the issue number takes no. beside it: Journal of Applied Learning Science 115, no. 4 (2023).
A note cites a page, a bibliography cites the whole
The footnote points at the exact page under discussion. The bibliography entry records the article's full page range instead.
Chicago bibliography entries by source type
Four source types under the notes system. Switch the widget above to author-date for the science-facing versions of each.
Journal article
Chen, Maya R., and Liam O'Connor. "Sleep quality and academic performance in first-year university students." Journal of Applied Learning Science 115, no. 4 (2023): 512-528. https://doi.org/10.1234/jals.2023.0158.
Book
Chen, Maya R. The Science of Student Sleep. 2nd ed. Academic Press, 2021.
Book chapter
Chen, Maya R. "Sleep and memory consolidation." In Handbook of Learning Science, edited by Liam O'Connor and Sofia Alvarez, 301-322. Academic Press, 2022.
Website
World Health Organization. "Sleep and adolescent health." WHO Fact Sheets. Accessed 14 July 2026. https://example.org/sleep.
The four entries above come out of the generator on this page. Their authors, titles and DOIs are fabricated for the example.
Typical users of the Chicago generator
History and humanities students
Get a footnote, its shortened form and a bibliography entry as a set, with the name-order switch between them handled automatically.
Researchers and academics
Move a manuscript from notes to author-date at a publisher's request without rebuilding a single entry from scratch.
AI-assisted writers
Check every footnote of an AI-drafted chapter against Crossref before a reviewer goes looking for a source that never existed.
Editors and typesetters
Settle a punctuation dispute by pointing at output built from the current manual rather than someone's memory of an older one.
The footnotes are settled.
The argument they support still needs a pass.
The TextPulse humanizer reworks AI-flavoured phrasing across the manuscript while every note and bibliography entry stays exactly where it was generated, with tracked changes on each edit.