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Periodicals

Periodicals include print journals, electronic journals, magazines, and newspapers. Citations for these sources should include enough information for the reader to find them  in a library or a database, and as such, publication dates are essential. Magazines and newspapers are typically serialized by day, month, and year; journals include volume, year, month, or season and issue number.

One of the major differences between notes and bibliographic entries for periodicals is the way in which major elements are separated. In notes, the major elements are separated by commas. In the bibliography, the major elements are separated by periods.

Journals

Notes and bibliographic entries for a journal include the following: full name of the author(s), article title, journal title, and issue information. Issue information refers to volume, issue number, month, year, and page number(s). For online works, retrieval information and the date of access are also included.

Author Name:

Notes include the author’s name as listed in the article. Bibliographic entries, however, invert the author’s name (last name, first name).

Article Title:
Both notes and bibliographies use quotation marks to set off the titles of articles within the journal.

Journal Title:
Journal titles may omit an initial “The” but should otherwise be given in full, capitalized (headline-style), and italicized.

Issue Information:
The volume number follows the journal title with no punctuation and is not italicized. The issue number (if it is given) is separated from the volume number with a comma and is preceded by “no.” The year appears in parentheses after the volume number (or issue number if given). The year may be preceded by a specific date, month, or season if given. Page information follows the year. For notes, page number(s) refer only to the cited material; the bibliography includes the first and last pages of the article.

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Electronic Journals

Citing electronic journals generally follows the same format for printed periodicals, which is explained in the Journals section. Additionally, entries include the DOI or URL (DOIs are preferred). The date accessed is not required by CMOS for citations of formally published electronic sources. If an access date is required for other reasons (i.e. by discipline, publisher, or instructor), the access date should be included immediately prior to the DOI or URL. If included, access dates should be separated by commas in notes or periods in bibliographical entries.

Dates:

Even if weekly or monthly magazines are numbered by volume or issue, they are cited by date only. When following the CMOS Note and Bibliography style, the year is presented as shown in the examples below. When following the CMOS Author-Date style, the date is essential to the citation and it is not enclosed in parentheses.

Page Numbers:
Citations for journal articles may include a specific page number. Inclusive page numbers for the entire article are often omitted in bibliographical entries, however, because the pages of the article are often separated by many pages of unrelated material. If page numbers are included, they should follow the date and be preceded by a colon.

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Magazines

Notes and bibliographic entries for magazines include the following information: author’s name, article title (enclosed by quotation marks), magazine title (italicized), and date. Page numbers are included in notes but are omitted in bibliographic entries. Regular departments (or regularly occurring subsections) in a magazine are capitalized but not put in quotation marks. For example, National Geographic is the magazine that regularly includes a department called Foods of the Region.  

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Online Magazines

Notes and bibliographic entries for online magazines should follow the relevant examples for printed magazines. Additionally, online magazine entries should contain the URL at the end of the citation. If no stable URL exists, the name of the database can be substituted.

Note: In the examples below, Green Room is not placed in quotation marks because it is the department title rather than the article title.

Access Date:

Access dates are not required by CMOS in citations of formally published electronic sources. If an access date is required for other reasons (i.e. by discipline, publisher, or instructor), the access date should be included immediately prior to the URL. In notes, access dates are surrounded by commas and in bibliographic entries they are surrounded by periods.

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Newspapers

Notes and bibliographic entries for newspapers should include the following: name of the author (if listed), headline or column heading, newspaper name, month (often abbreviated), day, and year. Since issues may include several editions, page numbers are usually omitted. If an online edition of a newspaper is consulted, the URL should be added at the end of the citation. Time stamps may be appropriate to include when stories for unfolding events are modified.

Names of Newspapers:
If the name of a newspaper begins with “The,” this word is omitted. For American newspapers that are not well-known, a city name should be added along with the newspaper title (see below). Additionally, a state abbreviation may be added in parentheses after the city name.

News Services:
News services, such as the Associated Press or the United Press International, are capitalized but not italicized and often appear in the author position of the citation.

Headlines:
Headlines may be capitalized using “headline style,” in which all major words are capitalized. Although many major newspapers prefer sentence style, the CMOS recommends headline style for consistency among various types of cited sources. Headlines presented entirely in full capital letters in the original are usually converted to headline-style upper and lower case in the citation.

Regular Columns:
If a regular column is cited, the column name may be included with the article title.

Editorials, Letters to the Editor, and Readers’ Comments:
Published editorials and letters to the editor should be treated generically, usually without headlines. Instead of a title, use “letter to the editor” [14.196].

Citing in Text:
Newspapers are more often cited in notes or parenthetical references than in bibliographies. If newspaper sources are carefully documented in the text, they need not be cited in the bibliography.

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