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Chicago Style: Books and eBooks

A guide to writing papers and citing sources in Chicago style.

Formatting

For a References page, your citations need to be double spaced and have a hanging indent. A hanging indent just means that every line after the first in your citation is indented 0.5". 

In Microsoft Word (PC or Mac), highlight your citation and right click on it. Select "Paragraph" in the menu that appears, then under "Indentation" click on the Special drop down and select "Hanging". Make sure the "By" field is set to 0.5".

Books and eBooks

As with foot- and endnotes, the basic rules for citing a book form the basis of bibliographic entries for most other sources. Your citation contains most of the information contained in your notes, just formatted differently. For a book, try to include the following elements, separated by periods:

  1. Author: full name of author(s) or editor(s) or, if no author or editor is listed, name of editors or institution standing in their place (Lastname, Firstname for the first author, Firstname Lastname for any subsequent authors)
  2. Title: full title of the book, including subtitle if there is one, written in italicized characters with all major words capitalized. If referencing a chapter write (chapter name) in (book title), encasing the chapter title in quotation marks, and writing the book title in italicized characters.
  3. Editor: compiler, or translator, if any, preceded with ‘Edited by’ (firstname lastname).
  4. Edition: if not the first (e.g. 4th ed.)
  5. Volume: total number of volumes if multivolume work is referred to as a whole; individual number if single volume of multivolume work is cited, and title of individual volume if applicable (title written in italicized characters and preceded by ‘of’).
  6. Series title:, if applicable and volume number within series if series is numbered.
  7. Publication Facts  (e.g. city, publisher and date).
  8. URL/DOI/Medium: (For electronic books accessed online) , or, for other types of electronic books, an indication of the medium consulted (e.g. Kindle e-book, CD-ROM)

The basic layout of a citation for a book or ebook would thus be:

Author Lastname, Firstname (additional authors firstname lastname). “Chapter of Book” in Title of Book. Edited by Firstname 

Lastname. nth ed. vol. #, of volume title. City of Publication: Publisher, Year. URL/DOI/Medium.

Examples

One Author

Shields, David. The Thing about Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

One Author, Chapter

Samples, John. “The Origins of Modern Campaign Finance Law.” Chap. 7 in The Fallacy of Campaign Finance

Reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

2+ Authors

Levitt, Steven D. and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New

York: William Morrow, 2005.

Editor

Greenberg, Joel, ed. Of Prairie, Woods, and Water: Two Centuries of Chicago Nature Writing.  Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2008.

Author and Editor

Bonnefoy, Yves. New and Selected Poems. Edited by John Naughton and Anthony Rudolf. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1995.

Editions

Harper-Dorton, Karen V. and Martin Herbert. Working with children, Adolescents, and Their Families, 3rd ed. Chicago:

Lyceum Books, 2002.

Volumes

Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. vol. 5, 1883-1884. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963.

Electronic Books

Antokoletz, Elliot. Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195365825.001.0001.