Just like the MLA and APA styles, The Chicago Manual of Style does not consider a PDF to be its own source type. When referencing a PDF in your work, you must cite it according to the type of source it came from, be it a book, journal, magazine, or other type of publication. Here is a look at how to do this correctly.
In-text Citation
There are two main citation methods in the Chicago Manual of Style. “Notes and Bibliography” is the most common, especially in the field of Humanities, but “Author-date style” is most used in the sciences. In the case of the former, a shortened form of the bibliographic information for the source you are citing is put in the footnotes or endnotes of the page and later cited fully in a bibliography at the end of the work. The exact method for this varies depending on what source type you are using (and could fill an entire article in and of itself), so we won’t go into full detail on it now, but you can find examples here.
To use the Author-date style for any type of source, on the other hand, you simply place the author’s name and the date the work was published inside parentheses, followed by a comma and the page number as seen at the end of this sentence (Johnson 1978, 14).
Bibliography and Reference List Formats
Below, each source type has been divided according to the citation method used (Notes and Bibliography or Author-date). Here is how to format the entry on your bibliography or reference page:
Book
- Notes and Bibliography format:
Author last name, first name. Title of Book. PDF file. Place of publication: publisher, year.
- Author-date format reference list:
Author last name, first name. Year. Title of Book. PDF file. Place of publication: publisher.
Journal
- Notes and Bibliography format:
Author last name, first name. “Title of Article.” Name of Journal volume, no. issue (month/season year):
page range of article. DOI if applicable.
- Author-date format reference list:
Author last name, first name. Year. “Title of article.” Name of journal volume, no. issue (month/season):
page range of article. DOI if applicable.
Newspaper
- Notes and Bibliography format:
Author last name, first name. “Title of Article.” Name of Publication, month date, year. URL if applicable.
- Author-date format:
Author last name, first name. Year. “Title of Article.” Name of Publication, month date, year. URL if applicable.
As you can see, each source type has a reference method that is similar, but not quite the same. No matter which type of original source you are citing, ShareDF recommends including the words “PDF file” after the title of the work and the URL or DOI of the PDF at the end.
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