Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
How to cite a thesis or dissertation in Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
A thesis needs its degree level and awarding institution, and the format changes depending on whether you read it in a repository or as an unpublished manuscript.
THE FORMAT
A thesis or dissertation in Chicago, at a glance
Last, First. “Title of Thesis.” PhD diss., University Name, Year. Database or URL.
Berhane, Selam. “Water Rights and Customary Law in the Awash Basin.” PhD diss., University of Calder, 2021. ProQuest (28471203).
1. Selam Berhane, “Water Rights and Customary Law in the Awash Basin” (PhD diss., University of Calder, 2021), 88.
In prose: 11. Berhane, “Water Rights,” 92.
Berhane, Selam. “Irrigation Cooperatives in the Middle Awash.” Master’s thesis, University of Calder, 2016. https://repository.calder.edu/handle/10345/2214.
In text: 2. Selam Berhane, “Irrigation Cooperatives in the Middle Awash” (master’s thesis, University of Calder, 2016), 41.
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 thesis or dissertation
Elements to collect
- Author
- Year the degree was awarded
- Title of the thesis
- Degree level — doctoral dissertation or master’s thesis
- Name of the awarding institution
- Repository or database name, plus URL, when it is published online
Rules specific to this entry
- A thesis title goes in quotation marks, not italics, even when the thesis sits in an institutional repository with a DOI. Chicago treats it as unpublished work regardless of how you got to it.
- The note parenthesizes the degree, institution, and year exactly the way it parenthesizes a book’s publication facts; the bibliography entry unpacks them into a period-separated sequence.
- Chicago abbreviates “PhD diss.” but writes “master’s thesis” out in full — capitalized as “Master’s thesis” when it opens the element in a bibliography entry, lowercase inside the parentheses of a note.
- Close with the database and its accession number, or with a repository URL. One or the other, not both.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Chicago needs for a thesis or dissertation: Author; Year the degree was awarded; Title of the thesis; Degree level — doctoral dissertation or master’s thesis.
Build the bibliography entry
Arrange those details in the Chicago order: Last, First. “Title of Thesis.” PhD diss., University Name, Year. Database or URL.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as 1. Selam Berhane, “Water Rights and Customary Law in the Awash Basin” (PhD diss., University of Calder, 2021), 88. — or work the same reference into your sentence as 11. Berhane, “Water Rights,” 92..
Check it against the exceptions
A thesis title goes in quotation marks, not italics, even when the thesis sits in an institutional repository with a DOI. Chicago treats it as unpublished work regardless of how you got to it.
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 thesis or dissertation in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Chicago and theses and dissertations
What if the thesis or dissertation 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 thesis or dissertation?
Author, Year the degree was awarded, Title of the thesis, and the rest of the elements listed above. A thesis needs its degree level and awarding institution, and the format changes depending on whether you read it in a repository or as an unpublished manuscript.
Is there anything unusual about a thesis or dissertation in Chicago?
A thesis title goes in quotation marks, not italics, even when the thesis sits in an institutional repository with a DOI. Chicago treats it as unpublished work regardless of how you got to it.
What else catches people out here?
The note parenthesizes the degree, institution, and year exactly the way it parenthesizes a book’s publication facts; the bibliography entry unpacks them into a period-separated sequence.
Can I reformat this thesis or dissertation 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.
