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Chicago Footnote Referencing - Theology Students

This guide provides information on how to reference using the Chicago Footnote referencing style. PLEASE NOTE: Counselling and Education students should use APA referencing style.

Footnotes

When you summarise or paraphrase an idea from a source, or when you use a direct quote from a source, you must cite the author or body responsible for the work in a footnote.  Each footnote should use a new number, even for a previously cited source. Most word processing software have a built-in footnote function, which will do the numbering and formatting automatically.

The footnote number should be placed at the end of the sentence or the end of a clause in a sentence, after any punctuation.

Example:
This view of Jerusalem being the centre of the world may be an attack on Roman imperial ideology,² however it is more likely that this concept is linked not just to the geographical but ethnical spread of the gospel.³

In the footnote you are required to provide full bibliographic details of the source the first time you cite the source; you can then use a shortened version of the author's name and title of the book in subsequent citations. See the tabs for different resources types for specific examples of how to do this.

Ibid. and op. cit.

The abbreviation ibid., previously used in Chicago when a citation duplicates the immediately preceding citation, is discouraged in favour of shortened citations.

The abbreviation op. cit., which is used in some referencing styles, is not used in the Chicago Style and should not be used in your assignments.

Multiple authors/references in one footnote

There can be times in your research when you have read the same idea from different authors in different sources. When including multiple authors in a footnote you should order them alphabetically according to the first author's surname and separating each citation with a semi-colon.

Example:
¹ Gerhard F. Hasel, Understanding the Book of Amos: Basic Issues in Current Interpretations, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1991), 103; J Carl. Laney, "The Role of the Prophets in God's case against Israel," Bibliotheca Sacra 138, no. 552 (1981): 316; Walther Zimmerli, The Law and the Prophets: A Study of the Meaning of the Old Testament, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 1965), 24.

Commentary and Quotations within Footnotes

When a note contains not only the source of a fact or quotation in the text but related comments as well, the source comes first. A period usually separates the citation from the commentary. Such comments as "emphasis mine" are usually put in parentheses.

Example:

3 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act 3, sc. 1. Caesar's claim of constancy should be taken with a grain of salt.
4 Little, "Norms of Collegiality," 330 (my italics).

When a note includes a quotation, the source normally follows the terminal punctuation of the quotation. The entire source need not be put in parentheses, which involves changing existing parentheses to brackets and creating unnecessary clutter.

Example:
1 One estimate of the size of the reading public at this time was that of Sydney Smith: "Readers are fourfold in number compared with what they were before the beginning of the French war. ... There are four or five hundred thousand readers more than there were thirty years ago, among the lower orders." Letters, ed. Nowell C. Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 1:341, 343.

Some notes of commentary may require citations of their own. When a source is needed, it can be provided the same way as the example above (that is, providing a full footnote citation after a full stop) or, if the source has already been cited in full, it can be cited parenthetically.

Example:
1 Ernst Cassirer takes important notice of this in Language and Myth (59-62) and offers a searching analysis of man's regard for things on which his power of inspirited action may crucially depend.


Keep in mind that although Footnotes, Endnotes or Appendices are not counted in your formal word count, their word count should not exceed 25% of the word limit. This includes both citations as well as supplementary information.

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