How to Create Turabian Style Citations
Turabian is basically Chicago style, but for students. This citation generator handles footnotes, bibliography entries, and in-text citations in Turabian format. Focus on your paper, not your endnotes.
Steps
Select Turabian as the citation style
Open the Citation Generator. Pick Turabian from the style dropdown. You'll see two options: notes-bibliography format (the go-to for history and humanities) or author-date format (some social sciences use this). Use whichever your professor said to use.
Choose your source type
Pick what you're citing: book, journal article, website, chapter in an edited volume, etc. Each type asks for different fields. Turabian is picky about books especially — it wants publisher, city of publication, and edition if it's not the first.
Fill in the source details
Enter author name (last, first), title, publisher, year, pages, and URL or DOI if you have one. Using notes-bibliography style? The turabian citation generator gives you both versions at once — the footnote (bottom of the page) and the bibliography entry (back of the paper).
Copy the formatted citation
Out comes your citation in correct Turabian format. All the fiddly stuff is handled — italics vs. quotation marks, multiple authors, proper punctuation between elements. Just copy and paste it into your paper.
When to Use Turabian Format
Turabian is the go-to for history papers at most American universities. When your professor says "use Chicago style" for a student paper, they usually mean Turabian. Same system, student-friendly version. You'll also see it in theology, philosophy, and some art history courses. The notes-bibliography approach works great when you're dealing with primary sources and archival materials. Why? Because footnotes let you add explanatory comments right alongside your citations. Writing about a medieval manuscript and want to note which archive holds the original? A footnote handles the citation and the annotation in one place. That flexibility is why historians pick it over parenthetical systems like APA.
Frequently Asked Questions
Honestly? Very little. Turabian is Chicago Manual of Style, but simplified for student papers. Kate Turabian made it specifically for University of Chicago students writing theses. The main difference: Turabian tells you about margins, title pages, formatting — stuff Chicago assumes a publisher handles. The actual citation formatting? Nearly identical.
Either one. Your professor will tell you which. Footnotes go at the bottom of the page. Endnotes get collected at the end of the paper. Same formatting — just different placement. Most professors want footnotes for shorter papers and endnotes for theses.
Usually, yes. Footnotes give citation details right where you reference something. The bibliography collects everything into one alphabetical list at the end. Think of it as: footnotes = in-text references, bibliography = master list. Some professors accept just one. When in doubt, ask.