Chicago/Turabian style annotated bibliography: a detailed explanation of formatting

Writing an Chicago/Turabian annotated list of references is an indispensable skill for anyone who is in any way connected with writing projects, diplomas, and dissertations. Frequently, it is students who are confronted with this type of assignment. And every time, they have a ton of questions about what to do and how to do it. If you don’t know anything about this type of annotation, you can use our writing service, and we will help you. Moreover, we are pleased to provide our Chicago/Turabian style annotated bibliography guide with a clear example.

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How to write an annotated bibliography Chicago or Turabian style?

Every student, at some point, wonders how to write an annotated bibliography Chicago so that the professor will be pleased and give a good grade. It is necessary to know at least the general guidelines for using this style.

Your Chicago/Turabian annotated bibliography should include the citation and a summary or evaluation of each source that you use in your piece of work. There should not be any problem with the citation because you should format it in a typical way that is well known to every student, namely author-date or notes-bibliography format.

In turn, the main rule of the Chicago/Turabian annotation is a small number of words. It is an immensely important rule that you should always pay attention to. Descriptive paragraphs should ideally be no more than 150 words long. The main purpose is to provide the readers of your research paper with a general background of the references you have used and to assure them that they are accurate, appropriate, and of good quality.

Now you have the general concept of how to write an annotated bibliography Chicago or Turabian style. Below you will learn what it means, why no one likes to format it, and how it should look. Our example and template will help you with this.

What is an annotated bibliography Chicago style?

In the beginning, in order to understand its concept, we should pay attention to the core of the topic, namely the bibliography. What does it mean in the field of science? It is a list of books, articles, journals, or websites that are located at the end of the research paper. It simplifies the process of finding the source that the writer uses in his piece of work.

So, what is an annotated bibliography Chicago style? The answer is very simple and easily understandable. It is the same bibliography, only with an annotation of the source that the writer used. Its character is more descriptive. Usually, students should express or cover the main points of the source briefly. Thanks to the Chicago/Turabian annotation, readers will be aware of the primary idea of the book or article without having to read the entire content.

Moreover, in the annotated part you can find not only the summary but also the evaluation of the source. It is recommended that your brief Chicago/Turabian annotation contain a description of the significance of using a particular resource.

What does a chicago style annotated bibliography look like? 

Formatting a Turabian or Chicago annotated bibliography is actually not as difficult as it seems at first glance. All you need to do is follow all the strict recommendations and pay attention to every nuance of the turabian/chicago list of references.

But you should remember that Chicago format annotated bibliography is not exactly the same as Turabian annotated bibliography. There are plenty of similarities, but the main difference is the numbering system for notes. In the Chicago manual of style annotated bibliography we should use a number in parentheses followed by a period, a space, and then the source information. But in contrast, the turabian style uses superscript numbers in the text of the paper and in the footnotes.

If you read below our guidelines, you will know the answer to the question: what does a chicago style annotated bibliography look like.

Step 1: Formatting the citation 

After choosing and using the sources in your paper, you can start formatting the citation. The style of the Chicago/Turabian citation is determined by the resources used. For instance, there are some differences in formatting among books, journals, and websites.

If it is necessary to cite a book in your turabian list of references, you should include such elements as author(s) of the book, its title, place of publication, publisher, and year of publication. Here you can find the template for the book citation with one author :

Author(s). Title of the book. Place publication: Publisher, Year.

Citing a source with more than one author is a little different:

Cunningham, Anna, and Rob McClurkan. The Planet. Talk a Story Ser. Franklin Watts, 2011.

For a journal article, you should use the following citation template:

Author(s). “Title of the article.” Title of the journal Volume number, no. Issue number (Year): page range.

Here is an example:

Goldfarb, Avi, and Catherine Tucker. “Digital Economics.” Journal of Economic Literature 57, no. 1 (2019): 3–43.

The easiest citation is the formatting of the website. Below, you can find the sample that you should use:

Author(s) of the website. “Title of the page.” Accessed Date of access. URL

The example:

Yablonski, Jon. “Doherty Threshold | Laws of UX.” Accessed November 30, 2022. https://lawsofux.com/doherty-threshold/.

Also, it is important to add the technical rules for formatting the citation, namely single-spaced source citation, hanging indent, and alphabetical organization of the author’s last name.

Step 2: Creating Turabian annotated text

Some basic guidelines for how we recommend writing annotation were mentioned previously, but there are important rules for what Turabian style annotation should look like:

  • each paragraph should be indented using the tab key
  • left-aligned text
  • indent 0.5

Step 3: Putting together all the elements

After analyzing all the rules that we described above, we give you a template and an annotated bibliography example chicago and turabian style. We hope you don’t have any more questions and that you will be a professional in chicago/turabian style.

Turabian or chicago style annotated bibliography template

Author(s). Title of the book. Place publication: Publisher, Year.

The text of the turabian annotation should consist of a summary and an evaluation. Writing more than 150 words is undesirable.

Annotated bibliography chicago style sample

Gates, Bill. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. Knopf, 2021.

Bill Gates provides a theoretical background on climate change. The author of this book focuses on the solution of saving the planet and the breakthroughs that we need in order to do this. Moreover, the author proposes his own plan for avoiding climate disaster.

We hope this information was useful for you. Our experts also prepared a list of annotated bibliography topics and tips for writing an annotated bibliography correctly.

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