What is the difference between footnotes or endnotes and a bibliography when you are using the Chicago Manual of Style?

Answer

In the Chicago Manual of Style (also known as Turabian), a bibliography is an alphabetical list of all of the sources that you have quoted, paraphrased, and/or summarized in the body of your research-based assignment. Bibliographies are usually included at the end of your paper. Bibliographies are optional in the Chicago Manual of Style, but be sure to ask your professor for their requirements.

Footnotes or endnotes are how you give credit to a source in the text itself. You use a superscript number in the text that corresponds to a note with citation information at the end of the document (endnotes) or at the bottom of the page (footnotes). Footnotes/endnotes are formatted differently than bibliography citations.

If you do not include a bibliography, the footnotes/endnotes in your paper must be full citations. If you include a bibliography, or if you are citing a source for the second time, you can use shortened citations for your footnotes or endnotes.

For example:

Text:

"Lincoln's vision of democracy—a vision, it should be noted, strongly shared by Tarbell—could only be saved if the Union was saved."1

Footnote/endnote (Full Citation):

1 Robert G. Wick, “‘He Was a Friend of Us Poor Men’: Ida M. Tarbell and Abraham Lincoln’s View of Democracy,” Indiana Magazine of History 114, no. 4 (December 2018): 255, https://doi.org/10.2979/indimagahist.114.4.01.

Footnote/endnote-Shortened Citation:

     1 Wick,"Poor Men," 256.

Citation in Bibliography 

Wick, Robert G. “‘Poor Men’: Ida M. Tarbell and Abraham Lincoln’s View of Democracy.” Indiana Magazine of History 114, no. 4 (December 2018): 255–82. https://doi.org/10.2979/indimagahist.114.4.01.

For more examples, go to the Chicago Manual of Style website.

More Resources:

How to Add Footnotes/Endnotes in Microsoft Word

OWL at Purdue- Chicago Manual of Style

What is a DOI

Shortened Citations in the Chicago Manual of Style

  • Last Updated Apr 08, 2023
  • Views 43412
  • Answered By Patty Hude

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