What is Chicago/Turabian Style?

The Chicago style is from the Chicago Manual of Style, a writing and style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. It has two versions, the humanities style (also called “notes-bibliography”) and the author-date style for social science and science. You’ll be using the humanities (notes-bibliography) style.

• Notes refer to the exact location of a quote, idea, or piece of data you have obtained from a source. Each note corresponds to a raised (superscript) number in the text. They may be inserted as footnotes or endnotes, depending on your instructor’s preference.
• The bibliography is used to document all the works you've consulted in your research.

You may also hear this called Turabian style. Turabian is a somewhat simplified version of the Chicago Manual of Style developed for student writers, published in Kate L. Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations.