Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
How to cite a chapter in an edited book in Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
A chapter has two sets of names — the chapter authors and the book editors — and getting the two the wrong way round is the single most common reference-list error.
THE FORMAT
A chapter in an edited book in Chicago, at a glance
Last, First. “Title of Chapter.” In Title of Book, edited by First Last, first–last page. Place: Publisher, Year.
Nwosu, Chidera. “Translating Silence: Fieldwork Ethics in Postwar Bosnia.” In The Ethnographer’s Dilemma, edited by Helena Brandt and Ivo Kraus, 143–67. Manchester: Fell and Wallis, 2020.
1. Chidera Nwosu, “Translating Silence: Fieldwork Ethics in Postwar Bosnia,” in The Ethnographer’s Dilemma, ed. Helena Brandt and Ivo Kraus (Manchester: Fell and Wallis, 2020), 151.
In prose: 14. Nwosu, “Translating Silence,” 158.
Nwosu, Chidera. “Translating Silence: Fieldwork Ethics in Postwar Bosnia.” In The Ethnographer’s Dilemma, edited by Helena Brandt, translated by Ivo Kraus, 143–67. Manchester: Fell and Wallis, 2020.
In text: 2. Chidera Nwosu, “Translating Silence: Fieldwork Ethics in Postwar Bosnia,” in The Ethnographer’s Dilemma, ed. Helena Brandt, trans. Ivo Kraus (Manchester: Fell and Wallis, 2020), 149.
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the bibliography builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What Chicago needs from a chapter in an edited book
Elements to collect
- Chapter author or authors
- Year of publication
- Chapter title
- Editor or editors of the whole book
- Book title
- Page range of the chapter
- Publisher
Rules specific to this entry
- The note abbreviates the editors to “ed.” and lowercases “in”; the bibliography entry spells out “edited by” and capitalizes “In” because it opens a new sentence. That pair is the most-corrected detail on this source type.
- Only the chapter author is inverted. The editors keep their natural first-name-first order in the note and in the bibliography alike.
- The chapter’s full page range goes in the bibliography entry, after the editors and before the place of publication. The note gives only the page you cited.
- Chapter title in quotation marks, book title in italics — never both italicized, and never the chapter alone in italics.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Chicago needs for a chapter in an edited book: Chapter author or authors; Year of publication; Chapter title; Editor or editors of the whole book.
Build the bibliography entry
Arrange those details in the Chicago order: Last, First. “Title of Chapter.” In Title of Book, edited by First Last, first–last page. Place: Publisher, Year.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as 1. Chidera Nwosu, “Translating Silence: Fieldwork Ethics in Postwar Bosnia,” in The Ethnographer’s Dilemma, ed. Helena Brandt and Ivo Kraus (Manchester: Fell and Wallis, 2020), 151. — or work the same reference into your sentence as 14. Nwosu, “Translating Silence,” 158..
Check it against the exceptions
The note abbreviates the editors to “ed.” and lowercases “in”; the bibliography entry spells out “edited by” and capitalizes “In” because it opens a new sentence. That pair is the most-corrected detail on this source type.
Chicago RULES
The conventions behind every Chicago entry
The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.) is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the bibliography is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the bibliography is sorted, and where Chicago entries most often go wrong — are collected on the Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography) guide.
The same chapter in an edited book in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Chicago and book chapters
What if the chapter in an edited book has no author?
Move the title into the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word of that title — ignoring an initial “A”, “An” or “The”. In the text, use a shortened form of the title where the author name would go.
What do I need before I can cite a chapter in an edited book?
Chapter author or authors, Year of publication, Chapter title, and the rest of the elements listed above. A chapter has two sets of names — the chapter authors and the book editors — and getting the two the wrong way round is the single most common reference-list error.
Is there anything unusual about a chapter in an edited book in Chicago?
The note abbreviates the editors to “ed.” and lowercases “in”; the bibliography entry spells out “edited by” and capitalizes “In” because it opens a new sentence. That pair is the most-corrected detail on this source type.
What else catches people out here?
Only the chapter author is inverted. The editors keep their natural first-name-first order in the note and in the bibliography alike.
Can I reformat this chapter in an edited book in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole bibliography at once.
