GSU Library Research Guides: HIST 4290: Enslavement in the Americas : Citing

Citation styles for history

Historians generally use the Chicago Manual of Style or its derivative, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (commonly known as Turabian, after its author). Though not identical, the two styles are very similar.

The Chicago/Turabian style offers two systems:
1) notes and bibliography (humanities style)
2) author-date

Historians prefer the humanities style because it accomodates a wide variety of sources. Documentation is presented by notes (either footnotes or endnotes) and a bibliography.

Find copies of these manuals in the library

Basics of Turabian

After using a source, put a superscript number at the end of your sentence:

Marius notes that "history and writing are inseparable."³

Cite the source in a correspondingly numbered note at the end of the page (footnote) or at the end of your paper (endnote):

3. Richard Marius. A Short Guide to Writing about History, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1999), 5.

If you use this source again, subsequent notes are shorter:

9. Marius, 105.

In your bibliography, list the source alphabetically according to the author's last name:

Marius, Richard. A Short Guide to Writing about History, 3rd ed. New York: Longman, 1999.

Turabian examples

	Note format	Bibliography format
Book (one author)	Jenny L. Presnell. The Information-Literate Historian: A Guide to Research for History Students (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 98.	Presnell, Jenny L. The Information-Literate Historian: A Guide to Research for History Students. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Article in a print journal	Jonathan Dewald, "Crisis, Chronology, and the Shape of European Social History," American Historical Review 113 no. 4 (October 2008): 1037.	Dewald, Jonathan. "Crisis, Chronology, and the Shape of European Social History." American Historical Review 113 no. 4 (October 2008): 1031-1052.
Article online	Emily Chao, "Dangerous Work: Women in Traffic," Modern China 28 no. 4 (October 2002): 73, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3181348 (accessed June 14, 2008).	Chao, Emily. "Dangerous Work: Women in Traffic." Modern China 28 no. 4 (October 2002): 71-107. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3181348 (accessed June 14, 2008).

Be aware of small differences across similar formats. For example:

Book citations vary slightly for edited collections, multiple authors, translations, or new editions.
Articles have subtle differences if they are newspapers, weekly magazines, or scholarly journals.