alltheway.educationalltheway.education
The Shed · Referencing

Referencing with Chicago

What Chicago footnotes are, what they are not, and a tool that builds each reference with you, one detail at a time.

What Chicago referencing is

Three pieces, and every source you use appears in all three. The rules are from The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (2024), with one IB addition: a date of access for everything you read online.

  1. 1A small number in your sentenceAfter the full stop of the sentence that uses the source. Google Docs adds the number for you.
  2. 2A short footnote at the foot of the pageThe author, a short title and the page if there is one. The same footnote every time you use that source.
  3. 3A bibliography at the endThe full details of every source, once, in alphabetical order by author. The footnote points the reader here.

Since 2019 the channel through the town has been widened and its banks regraded.1 Velocity at site 6 was lower than at site 5, although the sites are 40 m apart.

1 Ville de Nyon, “Renaturation de l’Asse.”

Bibliography

Nagle, Garrett, and Briony Cooke. Geography Course Companion. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Ville de Nyon. “Renaturation de l’Asse.” nyon.ch. Accessed 14 September 2026. https://www.nyon.ch/….

The same source in a footnote and in the bibliography: the footnote is short, and the bibliography has everything a reader needs to find it.

What it is not

Not the author-date version

Chicago has a second system with the name and year in brackets, (Nagle 2017). That is not this one. Google Docs’ own Citations tool and many websites’ “Cite this” buttons produce that version, so check before you paste one.

Not MLA, APA or Harvard

Many IB schools use Chicago footnotes for internal assessments and the extended essay. If your school uses a different system, follow your school.

Not a list of links

A bare URL tells a reader nothing about who wrote the page or when, and links break. A bibliography with no footnotes is not Chicago notes either: the footnote is what ties a fact to its source.

Not a cost to your word count

In IB coursework, references sit outside the word limit. A footnote that explains something rather than giving a reference may count, so check your subject’s rules and keep footnotes for references.

Not a licence to copy

A footnote says where an idea came from. Words you did not write still need quotation marks as well as the footnote.

Build a reference

Anything you did not find out yourself needs one: a fact, a figure, a map’s base layer, a theory, an image, an AI answer. Data you collected and photographs you took do not, though a photograph needs a caption.

The tool reads what the page says about itself and fills in what it can. It is often incomplete and sometimes wrong, so every filled field is marked for you to check against the page. A DOI or an ISBN works here too.

What are you referencing?

Or choose it yourself. Each kind of source asks for different details.

Online: most of your sources
Books and journals
Not online at all
Your own work

Web page: the details

Who wrote it?
A named person under the title or at the bottom. If no one is named, use the organisation that runs the site. If you cannot tell, leave it empty.
The heading of this page, not the name of the whole website. Copy it exactly, in its own language.
The name of the whole site, usually in the logo or at the very top. Leave it empty if it is the same as the author.
Look near the title or at the very bottom: “Published”, “Updated”, “Last modified”. Many pages have none, so leave it empty rather than guess.
Copy it from the address bar while you are on the page itself, not the home page.
The IB asks for this for every online source. Today, if you are reading it now.

Click into a field and the part of the reference it fills lights up. Dashed boxes are still to fill in.

The footnote
The same short note every time you cite this source.

“[Title of the page].”

The bibliography entry
The full details, once, in the list at the end.

“[Title of the page].” Accessed [Date you looked at it]. [Web address (URL)].

Still to fill in: Title of the page, Date you looked at it, Web address (URL).

My list for

One list per piece of work, already in alphabetical order. Add each source the day you use it, not the week before the deadline.

Checking your Revise account…

Nothing yet. Build a reference above and add it here.

Putting it into your Google Doc

  1. Put the cursor straight after the full stop of the sentence that uses the source.
  2. Insert → Footnote (Ctrl + Alt + F, or ⌘ + Option + F on a Mac). Docs adds the number and takes you to the foot of the page.
  3. Paste the footnote. Paste it normally, so the italics come with it.
  4. Use the same source again later? Paste the same footnote, changing the page number if there is one.
  5. On a new page at the end, write the heading Bibliography and paste the list. Then give it a hanging indent: select the entries, Format → Align & indent → Indentation options, and set Special indent to Hanging.

Look-ups use Crossref for DOIs, Open Library for ISBNs and the page’s own details for web addresses. Only the address or number you paste is sent. Your lists stay in this browser, or in your Revise account if you are signed in.

Referencing with Chicago | Revise