Author-Date: It’s in the Way That You Cite It

CMOS supports two systems of source citation. Notes and bibliography, covered in a previous workout, consists of numbered footnotes or endnotes and, usually, a bibliography. Author-date, the subject of this workout, relies on parenthetical references in the text and a corresponding reference list.

These two systems are more alike than they are different. If you’re new to either one of them, review chapters 14 (notes-bibliography) and 15 (author-date) before taking this quiz. You can also check out our free Citation Quick Guide. 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). (We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

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

[Editor’s note: This quiz relies on and links to the 17th edition of CMOS.]

Chicago Style Workout 50: Source Citations, Part 2

1. Entries in a Chicago-style author-date reference list are identical to entries in a Chicago-style bibliography except for

the placement of the year of publication

titles of works, which are styled differently

both of the above

2. An in-text citation—for example, “(Smith 2020)”—functions like

a superscript number in the text

a footnote or endnote

a little of both

3. An in-text citation is always placed before a closing quotation mark, “like this (Smith 2020).”

True

False

4. In the author-date system, a parenthetical date may follow the author’s name even if the name is in the possessive case. For example: In Smith’s (2020) analysis . . .

True

False

5. Consecutive references in the text to two or more sources require additional parentheses, like this: (Gomez 1999) (Smith 2020).

True

False

6. An in-text citation for a work by two or more authors includes the name of the first author only, followed by “et al.” For example: (Smith et al. 2020).

True

False

7. An in-text citation for a work attributed to one or more editors does not include “ed.” or “eds.” For example: (Smith 2020), not (Smith ed. 2020).

True

False

8. Two or more works by the same author are normally listed in the reference list

alphabetically, by title

chronologically, from oldest to newest

9. Two or more works by the same author published in the same year are differentiated by adding a letter after the year. For example: (Smith 2020a, 2020b).

True

False

10. In the author-date system, unsigned news articles are usually cited by the name of the newspaper. For example: (Los Angeles Times 2020).

True

False

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