Chicago Style Paper Writing Guide

In the world of academics, there are a few different formatting styles: APA, MLA, and Chicago Style. They are all used in different academic disciplines. The MLA style is only used in the language arts discipline. APA is use in the social sciences disciplines. Chicago Style is used in the humanities and many academic institutions actually prefer this style over MLA.

Choices with Chicago Styles

The Chicago Style is unique because it has two different ways to document research. One involves the writer including notes and bibliography information. The second involves including the author and the date of publication. Writers decide to use one or the other depending on what they are researching and the way they are researching.

Humanities Choices

Researchers who use the bibliography style with notes usually are researching literature, arts, and history. This style is used to share bibliography information and writers are able to include more information in a bibliography than just the author and date. With the topics presented in this style, the obscure sources are easier to present in this style.

Science Options

Researchers in the academic disciplines like physical science or natural science often choose the author and date style. They do this because they usually need the up-to-date research to support their hypothesis, so they avoid the obscure sources like the literature and arts researchers. When using the author-date style, writers can include the sources in the text without having to create a long list of works cited on a bibliography page.

Rules for Consistency

Just like the MLA and APA style, the Chicago Style follows rules of grammar, punctuation, and writing style. With the proliferation of online sources, the Chicago Style Manual has recently been updated so that researchers can properly document their newest sources. Writers can easily access the rules on the Chicago Style website. There are also sites Calvin Edu that make it very easy for students to simply input the source information and get the bibliography information in the proper format.

Check out the Q & A

Graduate students who use Chicago Style can prepare their documents for printing and publishing. If you are a student looking to publish a thesis or other important document, you should certainly familiarize yourself with a proper style. The website includes a useful question and answer section to clarify some of the mysterious styles that Chicago Style requires of its users. With the two choices, many students are confused as to what to use and how to use it.