Chicago vs Turabian: What Actually Differs

Quilpen EditorialCitation systemsAugust 9, 20263 min read

In short

Turabian is not a different citation style from Chicago — it is an abridged version of The Chicago Manual of Style, written for students rather than publishers. Notes and bibliography entries are formatted essentially identically in both, and both document the same two systems: notes-and-bibliography, standard in history and theology, and author–date, used in the sciences. Three things actually differ. Scope: Chicago runs past a thousand pages covering grammar, indexing and book production; Turabian is a quarter of that. Paper formatting: Turabian specifies title pages, one-inch margins, double spacing and page number placement, where Chicago says little because a publisher house style would override it. And small editorial simplifications where Turabian picks one option from several Chicago leaves open. Follow your department handbook first, since it overrides both; otherwise use Turabian for a class paper, thesis or dissertation, and Chicago for work headed to publication.

Students are regularly told to use "Turabian" and then discover that every citation example they find online says "Chicago". Both are correct, and the confusion is structural rather than anyone's fault.

How are Chicago and Turabian related?

Kate Turabian was the dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago. In 1937 she wrote a short guide condensing The Chicago Manual of Style into the parts a student writing a term paper actually needs. That guide became A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations — now in its 9th edition, and universally called "Turabian".

So Turabian is derived from Chicago. It is not a competing standard. When the two are both current — Chicago 17th edition and Turabian 9th edition — their citation rules are aligned by design.

What is identical between them?

Effectively all of the citation mechanics:

Note (first, full):

¹ John A. Smith, The Theory of Everything (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 45.

Note (subsequent, shortened):

² Smith, Theory of Everything, 52.

Bibliography:

Smith, John A. The Theory of Everything. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Those are the same in both manuals. So are the two systems each offers:

Notes and bibliography — footnotes or endnotes plus a bibliography. Standard in history, art history, theology and literature.
Author–date — parenthetical citations plus a reference list. Used in the sciences and some social sciences.

Both manuals document both systems. Picking Chicago or Turabian does not pick the system for you; your department does that.

What actually differs?

Scope and audience

Chicago is written for authors, editors and publishers preparing work for publication. It runs past a thousand pages and covers grammar, usage, indexing, and the mechanics of producing a book.

Turabian is written for students preparing work for submission. It is roughly a quarter of the length and drops everything that only matters to a publisher.

Paper formatting

This is the practical difference. Turabian specifies how a class paper or dissertation should physically look:

Element	Turabian 9
Title page	Specified layout, centred, no page number
Margins	Minimum 1 inch all sides
Body text	Double-spaced
Block quotations	Single-spaced, indented, no quotation marks
Notes	Single-spaced within, blank line between
Page numbers	Top right, or bottom centre on the first page of a chapter

Chicago says comparatively little about this, because a publisher's house style would override it anyway.

If your instructor says "Turabian", they usually mean this — the paper layout — as much as the citations.

Small editorial differences

A handful of minor divergences exist, mostly where Turabian simplifies a choice Chicago leaves open:

Chicago permits several approaches to abbreviating repeated citations; Turabian recommends one and moves on.
Chicago discusses when a bibliography may be omitted; Turabian generally assumes a student paper includes one.
Chicago's treatment of unusual source types is far more granular.

None of these change how a standard book, article or thesis is formatted.

Which should you use?

Follow this order:

Your department's handbook, if it specifies one. It overrides both manuals.
Turabian, if you are writing a class paper, thesis or dissertation.
Chicago, if you are preparing something for publication.

If you have been told "Chicago" and you are a student, using Turabian's paper formatting will not cause a problem — it is Chicago, formatted for submission.

Does Chicago style mean footnotes or author–date?

One genuine trap: "Chicago style" in a humanities context almost always means notes and bibliography. In some social science contexts it means author–date, which looks like this instead:

(Smith 2020, 45)

with a reference list rather than a bibliography. These are not interchangeable within one paper. If your source of instruction just says "Chicago", check which system before you write fifty footnotes in the wrong one.

The short version: same citations, different manual, different audience. If you can format a citation in Chicago, you can format it in Turabian — what you additionally need from Turabian is how the page around it should look.