Turabian Citation Generator

Turabian is the student version of Chicago, set out in Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. The 9th edition is aligned with the 17th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, so for the source types you cite most — books, journal articles, chapters and websites — a Turabian citation looks the same as a Chicago notes–bibliography citation. Turabian simply reframes Chicago’s guidance for student papers, theses and dissertations rather than for professional publishing, so the formatting rules you apply here are not invented differences from Chicago — they are the same rules, presented for student writers.

They carry the same information but are punctuated and ordered differently. A footnote is a sentence-like note keyed to a superscript number in your text: it names the author in natural order (First Last), separates elements with commas, puts publication details in parentheses, and points to the single page you used. A bibliography entry is a standalone record at the end of your paper: it inverts the first author (Last, First), separates elements with full stops, and gives the full page range of the source. This generator produces both so you can drop the note into your footnote and the entry into your bibliography.

It depends on whether you are writing the footnote or the bibliography. In a footnote, list every author for a work with up to three authors; for four or more, give only the first author followed by “et al.”. In the bibliography, list every author for a work with up to ten; for eleven or more, list the first seven and then “et al.”. This tool applies the correct rule automatically for each form.

Begin the citation with the title instead of an author, and alphabetise the bibliography entry by the first significant word of that title (ignoring an initial “The”, “A” or “An”). In a footnote, start with the title in the same place the author would normally appear. If a corporate body or organisation is responsible for the work, use that organisation’s name as the author — this generator treats an organisation as a single author and never inverts or abbreviates it.

Turabian uses headline (title) case for every title: capitalise the first and last words and all principal words, and lowercase short articles, conjunctions and prepositions such as “the”, “and”, “of” and “in” unless they begin the title or a subtitle. Titles of shorter works — articles, chapters, web pages and conference papers — go in double quotation marks, while titles of standalone works — books, journals, newspapers and reports — are italicised. This generator applies the correct case and the right quotation marks or italics to each field for you.

Add a DOI whenever a source has one, formatted as a full link in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx; if there is no DOI, use the source’s stable URL instead. In a footnote the link comes after a comma at the end of the note; in a bibliography entry it comes after a full stop, with a final full stop after it. For a web page with no clear publication date, give the date you accessed it instead.

It follows Turabian’s 9th edition (2018) and the notes–bibliography system — superscript note numbers in the text, full footnotes (or endnotes) on the page, and an alphabetical bibliography at the end. Turabian also describes an author–date system more common in the sciences; if your department asks for author–date instead, an APA or Harvard generator will match that pattern more closely. For the standard history and humanities expectation, the footnote-and-bibliography output here is what you want.