Chicago 18 author-date: cite a journal article

Reading the author-date article pattern

In Chicago's author-date system the year comes straight after the author's name, so the reference list lines up with in-text citations such as (Stone 2024). The article title is in quotation marks and title case, and the journal title is italicized. Volume, issue and pages follow the journal name without the vol. and no. labels.

Applied to the Stone article, the reference-list entry is: Stone, Maya. 2024. “A Small Study.” Journal of Sample Studies 12 (2): 12–18. Add the italics to Journal of Sample Studies when you paste it, because the copied text is plain.

Workbench steps for this article

• Pick Chicago 18 author-date reference, Journal article and Print version.
• Enter Maya and Stone. Chicago output keeps the full given name, Stone, Maya, rather than an initial.
• Type A small study as the Source title and A Small Study as the Reviewed title-case title. If the title-case field is empty, the workbench prints the source title exactly as typed and does not capitalize it for you.
• Fill Journal of Sample Studies, 2024, volume 12, issue 2 and pages 12-18, then press Create reference.

Page ranges and identifiers

For Chicago the workbench shortens longer ranges; 436-444, for instance, would come out as 436–44. The short 12-18 range stays as it is. Compare any shortened range with the Chicago examples linked on this page. A DOI typed without its prefix is added at the end as a https://doi.org/ link followed by a period.

Article numbers and online-first papers without page numbers are outside the reviewed journal template, so the workbench holds them instead of producing an entry with invented pages.

Author-date citations in the app

Chicago author-date is one of the three styles open in the free version of Citelle, with APA 7 and MLA 9. After you add the article, Copy in-text on its card gives (Stone 2024), and Copy citation copies the reference with the italics included, ready for Word, Pages or Google Docs. The app turns titles into title case for Chicago itself, so check names, acronyms and other words that need their original capitals. The browser workbench, by contrast, returns no in-text citation at all.

Checks before you hand it in

• Make sure your instructor wants author-date and not notes and bibliography; the two systems use different entries.
• Keep the article title and the journal title in their own fields.
• Use the published page range, not the number of pages in the PDF.
• Add the page you quote to the in-text citation yourself; the reference entry gives the article's full range.

Gather the source details

• Open the article or its publisher record.
• Record authors in the published order.
• Distinguish the article title from the journal title.
• Check volume, issue, pages or article number and any assigned DOI.

Author

Maya Stone

Title as supplied

A small study

Publication year

2024

Containing work or site

Journal of Sample Studies

Volume

12

Journal issue

2

Published pages

12-18

Tools

• Open the reference workbench

Sources

• Chicago18: Author-date examples

Next guide: Chicago 18 bibliography: cite a journal article