Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
How to cite a journal article in Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
Journal articles carry the most metadata of any source — volume, issue, page range, and a DOI — and each style orders and punctuates them differently.
THE FORMAT
A journal article in Chicago, at a glance
Last, First. “Title of Article.” Journal Name Volume, no. Issue (Year): first–last page. DOI.
Marchetti, Elena. “Coastal Retreat and the Limits of Managed Adaptation.” Journal of Environmental Planning 48, no. 2 (2019): 211–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2019.1583224.
1. Elena Marchetti, “Coastal Retreat and the Limits of Managed Adaptation,” Journal of Environmental Planning 48, no. 2 (2019): 218, https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2019.1583224.
In prose: 7. Marchetti, “Coastal Retreat,” 221.
Okonkwo, Adaeze, Peter Lindqvist, Maria Salas, and Yusuf Demir. “Salinity Thresholds in Delta Rice Systems.” Agricultural Water Management 264 (2022): 88–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2022.107512.
In text: 3. Adaeze Okonkwo et al., “Salinity Thresholds in Delta Rice Systems,” Agricultural Water Management 264 (2022): 94.
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 journal article
Elements to collect
- All author names, in the order printed on the article
- Year of publication
- Article title
- Journal name (in full, not the abbreviation, unless the style asks for it)
- Volume and issue number
- Page range
- DOI, or a stable URL when there is no DOI
Rules specific to this entry
- The note cites the single page you actually used; the bibliography entry gives the article’s whole page range. That one difference accounts for more corrections than any other rule here.
- The colon before the page numbers appears only when page numbers follow. Volume is plain, the issue is preceded by “no.”, and the year sits in parentheses with no comma before it.
- Chicago spells journal names out in full for the humanities — <em>Journal of Environmental Planning</em>, never <em>J. Environ. Plan.</em>
- Give the DOI as a full https://doi.org/ address and close it with a period. Use a stable URL only when the article has no DOI.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Chicago needs for a journal article: All author names, in the order printed on the article; Year of publication; Article title; Journal name (in full, not the abbreviation, unless the style asks for it).
Build the bibliography entry
Arrange those details in the Chicago order: Last, First. “Title of Article.” Journal Name Volume, no. Issue (Year): first–last page. DOI.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as 1. Elena Marchetti, “Coastal Retreat and the Limits of Managed Adaptation,” Journal of Environmental Planning 48, no. 2 (2019): 218, https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2019.1583224. — or work the same reference into your sentence as 7. Marchetti, “Coastal Retreat,” 221..
Check it against the exceptions
The note cites the single page you actually used; the bibliography entry gives the article’s whole page range. That one difference accounts for more corrections than any other rule here.
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 journal article in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Chicago and journal articles
What if the journal article 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 journal article?
All author names, in the order printed on the article, Year of publication, Article title, and the rest of the elements listed above. Journal articles carry the most metadata of any source — volume, issue, page range, and a DOI — and each style orders and punctuates them differently.
Is there anything unusual about a journal article in Chicago?
The note cites the single page you actually used; the bibliography entry gives the article’s whole page range. That one difference accounts for more corrections than any other rule here.
What else catches people out here?
The colon before the page numbers appears only when page numbers follow. Volume is plain, the issue is preceded by “no.”, and the year sits in parentheses with no comma before it.
Can I reformat this journal article 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.
