Chicago Manual of Style 18th Ed.: General Guidelines

General Format

• The margins should be 1 inch on all sides.
• Use a widely available, legible font, such as 12 pt. Times New Roman or Calibri, or 11 pt. Arial 
• Place page numbers at the top right 
• Don’t put a page number on the title page, but count it in the page numbering.
• Page numbers begin in the header of the Introduction page  
• Double space the main text 
• Indent the first line of each paragraph one-half inch.

Spacing and indentation

• Double-space the main text.
• Single-space figure captions and table titles.

Single-space the following, but add a blank line before and after each item in them:

• the table of contents
• footnotes or endnotes
• bibliographies or reference lists

What is Block Quotation?

• A prose quotation of five or more lines, or more than 100 words, should be blocked. 
• CMOS recommends blocking two or more lines of poetry.
• A blocked quotation does not get enclosed in quotation marks.  
• A blocked quotation must always begin a new line.
• Blocked quotations should be indented with the word processor’s indention tool.

Title Page:

• Class papers should begin with a title page (consult your instructor)
• Don’t put a page number on the title page.
• Title Page Use the same font as in the main text.
• Begin about 1/3 of the way down the page. 
• Make the main title and subtitle bold. The font size may be two or three points larger than the main text. 
• Put a colon at the end of the main title. 
• Use headline-style capitalization. Center the text. Double-space everything. 
• Add any information your instructor requests, such as your name, the title of the course, and the date. 

Example of Title Page

Libraries in the Digital World:

Library 2.0

Rumela Bose

LBRA 1911: Library and Information Literacy

February 3, 2025

Two documentation style in CMOS. Notes or Bibliography and Author-Date Style​

Notes and Bibliography:

• Used mostly in Humanities - including arts, literature, history
• Sources are cited in numbered footnotes or endnotes and correspond to superscript note reference number in the text
• Sources are also usually listed in a separate bibliography
• The footnote or an endnote generally lists the author, title, and facts of publication
• Authors' names are presented in standard order (first name first) in the "NOTE" section

Author-Date System:

• This system is more common in Social Science and Sciences
• Sources are briefly cited in the text, usually in parentheses, by author’s last name and year of publication
• Each in-text citation matches up with an entry in a reference list, where full bibliographic information is provided​

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Introduction Page:

• Place the title Introduction at the top of the first page, centered. Make this title and all other page titles bold. The font size for page titles may be two or three points larger than the main text. 
• Doublespace the main text.
• Leave two blank lines between the title and the first paragraph.