Chicago Style Workout 49: Source Citations, Part 1

Cat wearing glasses and staring into screen: "It says 'ibid.' What does that mean?"

Put Your Best Footnote Forward

To some of our readers, “Chicago style” is synonymous with a conventional system of numbered notes supported by a bibliography. That’s the subject of chapter 14, the longest chapter in CMOS. (Chapter 15, on the author-date system, will be covered in a future quiz.)

But this quiz isn’t going to test whether you can cite a chapter in an academic monograph or a book review in a major periodical (for that you can refer either to CMOS or to our Citation Quick Guide). Instead, we’ll focus on the basics: Why do you cite sources in the first place? What’s the difference between a footnote and an endnote? What is “ibid.”?

Whether you’re an academic writer (or someone who edits them) or a student (or an instructor), anyone can benefit from a refresher. (Teachers and students will find additional resources here.)

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual (cited in the answers). (For a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online, click here.)

Note: Style guides and dictionaries sometimes disagree. This quiz is designed to test your knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition.

Chicago Style Workout 49: Source Citations, Part 1

1. The main reason writers should cite their sources is
2. The most important difference between footnotes and endnotes is
3. A source citation should always end with a URL, even if the source is a printed book and the URL links to the record in a university library’s online catalog.
4. An access date is required in a Chicago-style citation for a source consulted online.
5. To avoid repetition and save space, a note that cites Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots, by Morgan Jerkins, would best be shortened to
6. The abbreviation “ibid.” means
7. A footnote can contain a mix of source citations and commentary.
8. The main purpose of a bibliography is to list sources that have not been cited in the notes or in the text.
9. In a bibliography, a 3-em dash (———) stands in for the name of one or more authors
10. A source cited in the notes is formatted and punctuated differently from a source cited in a bibliography

 

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2 thoughts on “Chicago Style Workout 49: Source Citations, Part 1

    • Good question! See the answer to question 10, which explains that authors’ names are presented in normal order (first name first and last name last) in a note but inverted in a bibliography entry (first author’s name only, in the case of a source with more than one) to facilitate alphabetical order. The example in the answer to question 6 is of a note, so the order there is correct.

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