Chicago style is the go-to format for history, the arts, and some social sciences. It's also the style used by many academic publishers and journals, which is why professors in these fields often require it.
What makes Chicago unique among citation styles is that it offers two systems: notes-bibliography (using footnotes or endnotes) and author-date (similar to APA). For annotated bibliographies, the bibliography format is used in both systems — the difference is mainly in how in-text citations work in your paper itself.
This guide covers the 17th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. For a general overview, see our main annotated bibliography guide. For other styles, check our APA guide or MLA guide.
Chicago Annotated Bibliography Format at a Glance
Page setup:
- Title: "Annotated Bibliography" centered at the top
- Font: 12-point Times New Roman or similar
- Margins: 1 inch on all sides
- Spacing: Single-space within entries, double-space between entries (or double-space throughout — check with your professor)
- Hanging indent: 0.5 inch for the citation
- Annotation: Starts on a new line, indented 0.5 inch
What each entry looks like:
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States: 1492–Present. New York:
Harper Perennial, 2005.
Zinn presents American history from the perspective of marginalized groups rather
than political elites. Beginning with Columbus and continuing through the early
2000s, the book argues that traditional textbooks present a sanitized narrative...
Notes-Bibliography vs. Author-Date
Notes-Bibliography system:
- In-text citations: Footnotes or endnotes
- Reference page: Bibliography
- Common in: History, arts, literature
- Annotated bibliography: Bibliography format
Author-Date system:
- In-text citations: (Author Year, Page)
- Reference page: Reference List
- Common in: Social sciences, natural sciences
- Annotated bibliography: Reference list format
For annotated bibliographies, both systems produce nearly identical results — the bibliography/reference list entries are formatted the same way, with minor differences in date placement. This guide focuses on the bibliography format (notes-bibliography system) since that's what most history and humanities students need.
Chicago Citation Format Rules
Book — Single Author
Bibliography format:
Last name, First name. Title of Book in Title Case. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year.
Example:
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
Key rules:
- Title: title case, italicized
- Include city of publication (unlike APA and MLA, Chicago still requires this)
- Use a colon between city and publisher
Book — Multiple Authors
Taylor, Alan, and Eric Hinderaker. Creating America: A History of the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014.
Key rules:
- First author: Last name, First name
- Subsequent authors: First name Last name
- Use "and" (not "&") between authors
Journal Article
Holt, Thomas C. "Marking: Race, Race-Making, and the Writing of History." American Historical Review 100, no. 1 (1995): 1–20.
Key rules:
- Article title: in quotation marks, title case
- Journal title: italicized, title case
- Volume number: not italicized, followed directly by ", no. X"
- Year: in parentheses after the issue number
- Page range: after the colon
Chapter in an Edited Book
Scott, Joan W. "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis." In Feminism and History, edited by Joan W. Scott, 152–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Website
Library of Congress. "The Gettysburg Address." Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/mal4356500/.
Key rules:
- Include "Accessed [date]" if no publication date is available
- Include the full URL
Complete Chicago Annotated Bibliography Examples
Example 1: American History Research Paper
Topic: The legacy of Reconstruction in shaping modern civil rights
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
Foner provides the definitive modern account of Reconstruction, arguing that it was a revolutionary period that fundamentally reshaped American democracy — not the corrupt failure depicted by earlier historians influenced by the Dunning School. Drawing on an exhaustive range of primary sources, including Freedmen's Bureau records, state legislative archives, and personal correspondence, Foner demonstrates that formerly enslaved people were active agents in shaping the political and social landscape of the postwar South. The book's scope is both its greatest strength and its limitation — at nearly 700 pages, it can be difficult to extract focused arguments for a shorter paper. This source is foundational to my thesis that Reconstruction established legal and political frameworks that would be reactivated during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935.
Du Bois challenges the then-dominant narrative that Reconstruction was a period of corruption and misgovernment caused by granting political rights to formerly enslaved people. Writing against the overtly racist historiography of William Dunning and his students, Du Bois argues that Black political participation during Reconstruction produced significant achievements, including the establishment of public education systems in the South and the passage of progressive labor legislation. The book was largely ignored by the historical establishment upon publication — it wasn't reviewed in the American Historical Review — which itself illustrates the racial politics Du Bois was critiquing. This source is essential to my historiographical chapter, as it represents the first major scholarly challenge to the racist interpretation of Reconstruction and anticipates many of the arguments Foner would later develop with greater archival support.
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2010.
Alexander argues that the American criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control analogous to Jim Crow laws, which were themselves a response to the gains of Reconstruction. She traces how the War on Drugs was designed to target Black communities, creating a permanent underclass stripped of voting rights, employment opportunities, and social status through the mechanism of felony conviction rather than explicit racial legislation. While legal scholars have criticized some of Alexander's comparisons as historically imprecise, the book's central insight — that racial control adapts its mechanisms without changing its fundamental character — provides a compelling framework for my paper's argument that the unfinished business of Reconstruction continues to shape American racial inequality.
Example 2: Art History Assignment
Topic: The politics of public monuments and memory
Young, James E. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Young examines Holocaust memorials across Europe, Israel, and the United States, arguing that monuments don't simply preserve memory — they shape it. Each memorial reflects not just what happened but how the commissioning society wants to remember what happened. Young introduces the concept of the "counter-monument" — memorials that resist the traditional impulse toward permanence and instead foreground the act of remembering itself. The book's comparative approach, examining how different nations memorialize the same event differently, is directly relevant to my analysis of Confederate monument controversies, as it provides a theoretical framework for understanding how monuments encode political ideology under the guise of historical memory.
Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Savage traces the history of Civil War monuments in the United States, demonstrating how public sculpture became a battleground for competing narratives about race, nation, and memory. He argues that the proliferation of monuments to generic white Union soldiers — rather than to Black soldiers or emancipation — reflected a deliberate effort to reconcile North and South at the expense of racial justice. The book is meticulously researched, drawing on commission records, newspaper accounts, and the monuments themselves as primary sources. This source is essential to my paper because it provides the historical context for understanding why Confederate monuments were erected decades after the war and what ideological work they were intended to perform.
Common Chicago Formatting Mistakes
Forgetting the city of publication. Unlike APA (7th edition) and MLA (9th edition), Chicago still requires the city of publication for books. This is the most common mistake students make when switching from another style.
Using "&" instead of "and." Chicago uses "and" between authors, not the ampersand. APA uses "&" — don't mix them up.
Incorrect date placement. In bibliography format, the year comes at the end of the citation after the publisher, not after the author's name (that's the author-date format).
Not including access dates for websites. Chicago requires either a publication date or an access date for online sources. If there's no publication date, include "Accessed [date]."
Inconsistent spacing. Some professors want single-spaced entries with double spacing between them; others want double-spacing throughout. Ask your professor or follow your assignment guidelines.
Finding Sources for Your Chicago Annotated Bibliography
Working on a history paper or humanities project? Sourcely searches across 200+ million academic papers and generates properly formatted Chicago style citations. Describe your research topic and find relevant scholarly sources in seconds rather than hours.
More Annotated Bibliography Guides
- What Is an Annotated Bibliography? — Types, structure, and when to use each
- Annotated Bibliography Examples — Complete examples across styles and disciplines
- Annotated Bibliography in APA — APA 7th edition formatting guide
- Annotated Bibliography in MLA — MLA 9th edition formatting guide
- How to Write an Annotated Bibliography — Step-by-step writing process
