Chicago B: Author-Date Style:  Reference list

General rules for the reference list

Chicago B features parenthetical in-text citations, and a corresponding alphabetical reference list at the end of the document. The reference list provides the full details of the sources cited in the text of your paper. See the example of a reference list on the CMOS website.

Basic structure of a reference list entry

• A reference list entry lists the author, year, title, and facts of publication, in that order. See an example on the CMOS site.
• Elements are separated by periods; the facts of publication are not enclosed in parentheses. 
• Authors’ full names are used with the first author's name inverted (last name first), e.g. Smith, Adam, and Daniel Jones. …
• Titles are capitalized headline-style, e.g. Introduction to Psychology.
• Titles of larger works (e.g. books and journals) are italicized; titles of smaller works (e.g., chapters, articles) or unpublished works are enclosed in quotation marks. 
• Noun forms such as editor, translator, and edition are abbreviated, but verb forms such as edited by and translated by are spelled out in a reference list.
• If a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is available for your source, cite the DOI instead of URL or database name 
• Database name or URL: If an online item does not have a DOI assigned, cite the URL if the item is available freely on the web, or cite the database name if the item is located in a library database.
• Chicago does not require access dates in the citations of electronic sources unless no date of publication can be determined.

General rules for the reference list

• Sources cited in text must appear in the reference list and vice versa.
• Reference list is arranged in alphabetical order by the surname of the first author or by the title if there is no author. Ignore the leading words "A","An", and "The" when alphabetising by title.
• References with the same first author are alphabetized by the coauthors’ last names (regardless of how many coauthors there are).
• Each entry should be single line spaced with half-inch hanging indent (i.e. the second and subsequent lines indented).
• Use “and” before the last author when citing multiple authors in reference list, do not use “&”.
• For multiple works by the same author, replace the author name with a 3-em dash in all entries after the first, e.g. 

Germov, John. 1994. “Medifraud: A Systemic Infection Untreated." Australian Journal of Social Issues 29, no. 3 (August): 301-04.

———. 1996. Get Great Marks for Your Essays. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin.

• Include all author names when a publication has up to 10 authors; include the first 7 authors followed by et al. for more than 10 authors.
• When no date is available, the abbreviation “n.d.” replaces the date, and include the access date to the reference.
• For works published in the same year by the same author, use letters (a, b, etc.) to differentiate the works, e.g. 

Acciari, Monia. 2014a. “British Asian Music and Its Networks.” South Asian Popular Culture 12 no. 3 (October): 181-188. 

———. 2014b. “The Italianization of Bollywood Cinema: Ad Hoc Films.” Studies in European Cinema11 no. 1: 14-25.

• For secondary sources, include both the original and the secondary sources in the text, and cite only the secondary sources in the reference list

For more details and examples follow the links to each type of sources at the left of this page or use the site index under How to reference....