Chicago 18th edition (author–date) references and in-text citations from a DOI, ISBN, URL or title, with the rules explained. Export the list to Word.
Let’s cite!
Paste a DOI, ISBN, PubMed or arXiv ID, a web address, or just a title. Your list is saved in this browser, so you can close the tab and come back to it.
Formatted by citeproc-js © Frank Bennett, unmodified, under the CPAL — citeproc-js implements the Citation Style Language. Styles from the CSL project, CC BY-SA 3.0 (our copies).
Paste a DOI, an ISBN, a link or a title and the tool finds the publisher's own record for it and formats it in Chicago 18th edition (author–date) — the author–date system used in the physical, natural and social sciences where Chicago is the house style, and many university presses. The references entry and the in-text citation come together, and the rules are those of the The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (2024), published by the University of Chicago Press. The author–date system has been part of the manual for decades and was revised with the 18th edition in 2024.
The Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide shows the author–date form alongside the notes form for every source type.
Three steps, about twenty seconds a source.
A DOI, an ISBN, a PubMed or arXiv ID, a web address, or a title. Chicago author–date is already selected on this page. The tool works out what you pasted and asks the right catalogue — Crossref, OpenLibrary, PubMed, DataCite or Semantic Scholar — for the record.
Each source gets a card showing what the catalogue held and what the tool changed to fit Chicago author–date: a DOI reduced to its bare form, a page range tidied. Every change can be undone with one click if the record was right as it was.
Copy the list with its formatting into Word or Google Docs, or download a .docx with the hanging indent and spacing already set. BibTeX, RIS and CSL-JSON exports carry the same data into Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote or LaTeX.
The rules the tool applies, from the The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (2024).
Six real sources — two journal articles, a book, a chapter, a web page and a conference paper — formatted by the same engine that runs the generator above. Nothing here was typed by hand, so what you see is what you get.
AI Writing Assistant. n.d. “Free AI Writing Tools: What Each Does and When to Use It.” AI Writing Assistant. Accessed September 18, 2026. https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html.
In text: (AI Writing Assistant, n.d.)
Golder, Scott A., and Michael W. Macy. 2011. “Diurnal and Seasonal Mood Vary with Work, Sleep, and Daylength Across Diverse Cultures.” Science 333 (6051): 1878–81. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1202775.
In text, citing page 1880: (Golder and Macy 2011, 1880)
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, Volume 3: Speech Acts, edited by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan. Academic Press.
In text, citing page 45: (Grice 1975, 45)
Kahneman, Daniel, Jack L. Knetsch, and Richard H. Thaler. 1991. “Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 5 (1): 193–206. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.5.1.193.
In text: (Kahneman et al. 1991)
Kuhn, Thomas S. 2012. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 4th ed. University of Chicago Press.
In text, citing page 12: (Kuhn 2012, 12)
Vaswani, Ashish, Noam Shazeer, Niki Parmar, et al. 2017. “Attention Is All You Need.” Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30, 5998–6008.
In text: (Vaswani et al. 2017)
Five errors markers see most often, and what the tool does about each.
(Kuhn, 2012) is APA. Chicago writes (Kuhn 2012), and the page after a comma: (Kuhn 2012, 12).
The author–date system carries the citation in the text; notes are for commentary only. Citing in both places is not a belt-and-braces measure but a mixed style.
In the reference list the year comes straight after the author, before the title. Leaving it where the notes system puts it defeats the purpose of the system.
Chicago joins authors with and, in the text and the list alike; the ampersand is APA's.
Chicago keeps title case for titles of articles and books even in the sciences.
If your handbook names one of these instead, its page opens the generator with that style selected.
Notes and bibliography is the other Chicago system: citations in footnotes, year at the end of the bibliography entry. History and the arts use it; if your handbook just says Chicago, that is usually the one meant. Open the Chicago page.
APA is the other big author–date style. It differs in the comma after the author, the ampersand, sentence-case titles and et al. from three authors. Open the APA page.
Yes. Every style, every source type and every export is free, with no account and no daily allowance, because the formatting runs in your browser rather than on our servers. Your list is saved in this browser and never sent to us.
The 18th edition (2024). The 17th-edition author–date style is also in the picker; the visible difference is that it keeps the publisher's place.
The author's surname and the year with no comma between them, then a comma and the page: (Kuhn 2012, 12). The tool prints the in-text form under each reference; turn on the in-text switch above the list if it is hidden.
Paste the address and the tool reads the page's title, author, site name and date where the page declares them, then formats it. The Chicago author–date form of a web page with an organisation as author and no date is: AI Writing Assistant. n.d. “Free AI Writing Tools: What Each Does and When to Use It.” AI Writing Assistant. Accessed September 18, 2026. https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html. Check the author and date on the card — pages often leave them out, and the style has a rule for each case.
Yes. Your sources are stored as data, not as formatted text, so choosing another style in the picker re-formats the whole list at once — APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, or any of the 10,000 Citation Style Language styles the picker searches.
From the The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (2024), published by the University of Chicago Press, as encoded in the open Citation Style Language style the tool uses. The Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide shows the author–date form alongside the notes form for every source type. Where your department's own guide differs on a detail, the department's guide is the one your marker reads.
Check the essay's grammar, tighten the wording, or summarise a source before you cite it. One plan covers every tool.
Each page opens the generator with that style already selected, shows what the tool prints for six real sources, and explains the style's rules. The picker above the list reaches more than 10,000 styles in all.
Upgrade
