Notes
Chicago Notes & Bibliography uses two different types of notes: footnotes and endnotes. You should insert notes within the program you are using (learn how), as opposed to trying to format them yourself, since the note systems will automatically update as you add new notes or new text.
Footnotes will appear at the bottom of a page. Small superscript numbers within the text will tell the user to look at the bottom and find the corresponding number.1
Endnotes appear as a separate page at the end of the paper.
Notes are formatted similarly to bibliography entries, but authors are listed in normal order (First Name Last Name) and components are separated with commas (no periods). Publication information is placed in parentheses. You can include page numbers within a note to indicate where you found the information.
This example shows a book first formatted for a bibliography (in light blue) and then for a note (in dark blue):
Hischak, Thomas S. 100 Greatest American Plays. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
1 Thomas S. Hischak, 100 Greatest American Plays (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 12–13.
Adding Notes
To add a note in Microsoft Word, click the References tab and then choose Insert Endnote or Insert Footnote.
Insert footnotes and endnotes [Microsoft Support]
Google Docs will only include footnotes. To add a footnote, click Insert and then Footnote.
Use headers, footers, page numbers, & footnotes [Google Docs]
To add a footnote in Pages on Mac, click the Insert and choose Footnote.
Footnotes can then be converted into an endnote.
Use footnotes and endnotes in Pages on Mac [Apple Support]
Changing Bibliography Entries to Notes
It is sometimes easier to take a bibliography citation and adjust it to fit the note format. To do that, you will need to follow five main steps. Click the tabs to see those steps. Here is the original bibliography entry being used and the corresponding note.
Bibliography Entry
Leidy, Denise Patry, Adriana Proser, and Michelle Yun. Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection. Rev. ed. Asia Society Museum, 2016.
Note
Denise Patry Leidy, et al., Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection, rev. ed. (Asia Society Museum, 2016), 38.
Step One: Adjust Authors
Change authors to be listed in normal order (first name, last name). If three or more authors are listed in the bibliography, list only the first author, and then the abbreviation et al.
Example
Before
Leidy, Denise Patry, Adriana Proser, and Michelle Yun. Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection. Rev. ed. Asia Society Museum, 2016.
After
Denise Patry Leidy et al. Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection. Rev. ed. Asia Society Museum, 2016.
Step Two: Change All Periods to Commas
Change all periods to commas, except those used as part of an abbreviation.
Example
Before
Denise Patry Leidy et al. Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection. Rev. ed. Asia Society Museum, 2016.
After
Denise Patry Leidy et al., Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection, Rev. ed. Asia Society Museum, 2016.
Step Three: Adjust Capitalization
Adjust capitalization for components that are now part of the "sentence."
Example
Before
Denise Patry Leidy et al., Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection, Rev. ed. Asia Society Museum, 2016.
After
Denise Patry Leidy et al., Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection, rev. ed. Asia Society Museum, 2016.
Step Four: Physical Publication
For items with physical publishing information (usually books and films), place this in parentheses. The period goes outside the parentheses.
Example
Before
Denise Patry Leidy et al., Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection, rev. ed. Asia Society Museum, 2016.
After
Denise Patry Leidy et al., Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection, rev. ed. (Asia Society Museum, 2016).
Step Five: Add the Cited Page
Replace a page range, such as in a journal article, with the specific cited page, or add the cited page following a comma.
Example
Before
Denise Patry Leidy et al., Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection, rev. ed. (Asia Society Museum, 2016).
After
Denise Patry Leidy et al., Treasures of Asian Art: The Asia Society Museum Collection, rev. ed. (Asia Society Museum, 2016), 38.
Short Notes
If you are repeatedly citing information from one source, you can use a shortened note for subsequent references to avoid duplicating the entire note. List the author's last name, a shortened version of the title (styled in quotes or italics), and then the page number being referred to.
1 Thomas S. Hischak, 100 Greatest American Plays (Rowman& & Littlefield, 2017), 12–13.
2 Hischak, 100 Greatest, 124.
3 Gerrit Albertson et al. "Margareta Haverman, A Vase of Flowers: An Innovative Artist Reexamined," Metropolitan Museum Journal 54 (2019): 148, JSTOR.
4 Albertson et al., "Margareta Haverman," 142.
5 Hischak, 100 Greatest, 110.