Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
How to cite a website in Chicago 17th edition (notes–bibliography)
Web pages often hide the author, the date, or both — and every style has a different rule for what to do when a required element simply does not exist.
THE FORMAT
A website in Chicago, at a glance
Organization or Last, First. “Title of Page.” Site Name. Date. URL.
Northgate Institute for Public Health. “Air Quality Monitoring in School Catchments.” Northgate Institute. Last modified April 9, 2023. https://www.northgateinstitute.org/air-quality-schools.
1. Northgate Institute for Public Health, “Air Quality Monitoring in School Catchments,” Northgate Institute, last modified April 9, 2023, https://www.northgateinstitute.org/air-quality-schools.
In prose: 6. Northgate Institute, “Air Quality Monitoring.”
Northgate Institute for Public Health. “Our Methodology.” Northgate Institute. Accessed March 3, 2024. https://www.northgateinstitute.org/methodology.
In text: 4. Northgate Institute for Public Health, “Our Methodology,” Northgate Institute, accessed March 3, 2024, https://www.northgateinstitute.org/methodology.
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 website
Elements to collect
- Author — a person if one is credited, otherwise the organization
- Date of publication or last update
- Title of the specific page (not the whole site)
- Name of the website or publishing organization
- URL
- Date you accessed it, when the style requires one
Rules specific to this entry
- Chicago treats most web content as citable in a note alone. Add it to the bibliography when the page carries real weight in your argument, or when your department wants every source listed — and be consistent about which rule you followed.
- Use the publication or last-modified date shown on the page. Only when there is neither do you fall back to an access date: “accessed March 3, 2024.”
- The page title goes in quotation marks and the site name stays in roman type. Italicize the site name only when it is the online edition of a print publication, such as a newspaper or magazine.
- The shortened note drops the URL and the date entirely, and usually carries no page number, since web pages rarely have stable ones.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Chicago needs for a website: Author — a person if one is credited, otherwise the organization; Date of publication or last update; Title of the specific page (not the whole site); Name of the website or publishing organization.
Build the bibliography entry
Arrange those details in the Chicago order: Organization or Last, First. “Title of Page.” Site Name. Date. URL.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as 1. Northgate Institute for Public Health, “Air Quality Monitoring in School Catchments,” Northgate Institute, last modified April 9, 2023, https://www.northgateinstitute.org/air-quality-schools. — or work the same reference into your sentence as 6. Northgate Institute, “Air Quality Monitoring.”.
Check it against the exceptions
Chicago treats most web content as citable in a note alone. Add it to the bibliography when the page carries real weight in your argument, or when your department wants every source listed — and be consistent about which rule you followed.
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 website in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Chicago and websites
What if the website 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 website?
Author — a person if one is credited, otherwise the organization, Date of publication or last update, Title of the specific page (not the whole site), and the rest of the elements listed above. Web pages often hide the author, the date, or both — and every style has a different rule for what to do when a required element simply does not exist.
Is there anything unusual about a website in Chicago?
Chicago treats most web content as citable in a note alone. Add it to the bibliography when the page carries real weight in your argument, or when your department wants every source listed — and be consistent about which rule you followed.
What else catches people out here?
Use the publication or last-modified date shown on the page. Only when there is neither do you fall back to an access date: “accessed March 3, 2024.”
Can I reformat this website 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.
