Turabian vs Chicago Citation: What Actually Differs

Turabian (formally A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, now in its 9th edition) is explicitly built as the student-facing version of The Chicago Manual of Style. Per university library guides, it uses the same two citation systems Chicago does — notes-bibliography for the humanities, author-date for the sciences and social sciences — with changes the guides describe as "slight," aimed at student research papers and theses rather than material headed for publication. Undergraduates, master's students, and thesis or dissertation offices are Turabian's intended audience; CMOS targets professional scholars, publishers, and copyeditors, and is most associated with history, literature, and the arts.

That's also exactly why a professor assigning "Chicago style" on a class paper almost always means Turabian's version in practice: the full Chicago Manual of Style spends hundreds of pages on book and journal production — ISBNs, series editors, manuscript preparation for a press — none of which applies to a term paper. Turabian strips that down to what a student writer actually needs.

Turabian 9 (2018) follows the 17th edition of Chicago (2017). The current Chicago Manual of Style is the 18th edition, published September 2024 — and several citation details changed between those two editions that Turabian's current manual doesn't reflect. In footnotes, CMOS 18 drops the place of publication for most modern books (keeping it only for some pre-1900 titles), where Turabian 9 still includes it. For a source with three authors, CMOS 18 shortens the note to the first author plus "et al."; Turabian 9 still names all three. The same gap shows up in the bibliography: Turabian lists up to ten authors before switching to "et al." (first seven, then et al.), while CMOS 18 caps that at six authors (first three, then et al.), and Turabian allows a repeated author's name to be replaced with a 3-em dash where CMOS 18 just repeats it.

A few formatting rules exist only in Turabian, because CMOS itself doesn't cover student-paper layout at all. Turabian specifies at least a 1-inch margin on all sides (with a half-inch clearance around a header or footer page number), double-spaced body text with single-spaced notes, bibliography entries, block quotations, and table captions, and a specific student title page — the title centered roughly a third of the way down the page, with name, course, and date about two-thirds down, no visible page number though it counts as page 1. A thesis or dissertation office will sometimes override that sample title page with its own required template, so check there first if you're writing one.

This isn't a style preference, it's whatever your assignment sheet or department says. If an instructor says "Chicago style" for a class paper, it's almost always Turabian's student version they mean. If you're submitting to a journal, a press, or doing editorial or copyediting work, the current Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed.) is the one that applies.

StudyPilot's citation generator includes Chicago as one of its built-in styles alongside APA, MLA, Harvard, IEEE, and Vancouver, handling the mechanical parts of a Chicago-style reference — author order, italics, punctuation. Since Turabian's citation mechanics are closely based on Chicago's, that gets a single reference most of the way there. It won't format Turabian-specific requirements on its own, though — the student title page layout, the margin and spacing rules, and the slightly different multi-author cutoffs above — so double-check those against your department's template or Turabian's manual.