Skip to Main Content

Civil Engineering

Citing

Commonly used Styles

Helpful Tools

Examples - Chicago Manual of Style

Journal Article

Lastname, Firstname. Year. "Title of the Article." Title of the Journal Volume (Issue number, if pagination for a volume is not continuous): Page      numbers. doi: or URL if online.
 
Karam, Maria, Frank A. Russo, and Deborah I. Fels. 2009. "Designing the Model Human Cochlea: An Ambient Crossmodal Audio-Tactile Display."      IEEE Transactions on Haptics 2, no. 3: 160-69. doi:10.1109/TOH.2009.32.

 

Magazine

Lastname, Firstname. Year. "Title of the Article." Title of the Magazine, Month Day, page number(s). doi: or URL if online.
 
Heft, Miguel. 2014. "Can Big Data Cure Cancer?" Fortune, August 11, 70.

 

Newspaper

Lastname, Firstname. Year. "Title of the Article." Title of the Newspaper, Month Day. URL if online.
 
Zimmer, Carl. 2014. "We May Be Our Own Best Medicine." The New York Times, September 16.

 

Website

Lastname, Firstname (or sponsor). Year. "Page Title or Description." Publication date or revision/modification date, if neither date is present      include an access date. URL.
 
Microsoft. 2007. "How to Programmatically turn off the Clipboard Warning Message." Last modified January 31.      http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287392.
 
University of Chicago. 2012. "Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide." Accessed August 30.      http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html.

 

Book

Lastname, Firstname, Firstname Lastname, and Firstname Lastname. Year. Book Title. Edition (abbreviated), if not 1st. Place of publication:      Publisher.
 
Gonen, Turan. 2012. Electrical Machines with MATLAB. 2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

 

Conference Paper

Lastname, Firstname. Year. "Title of the paper." In Title of the conference proceeding. Page numbers.
 
Barnett, Ralph L and John B. Glauber. 2010. "Automotive Lifts - Unrestrained v. Restrained Swing Arms." In Proceedings of the ASME      International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition 2009, IMECE2009. 373-87.

 

Standard

Corporate author's name. Year. Name of the Standard, Standard Number. Place of publication, State (if city is not commonly known): Publisher.
 
ASTM International. 2007. Standard Practice for Performance Evaluation of In-Plant Walk-Through Metal Detectors, ASTM C1309-97(2003). West      Conshohocken, PA: ASTM.  

Since standards are not a category in Chicago Manual of Style, find the category that is most like the item. Standards, in many ways, resemble a series of reports (section 14.128 of the 16th edition).

 

Patent

Lastname, Firstname. Year. Title of the patent. US Patent Number, filed Date, and issued Date.
 
Spannhake, Stefan, Reinhard Henkel, and Jurgen Gewinner. 2001. Electronic safety system for escalators. US Patent 6,267,219, filed Aug. 11,      2000, and issued July 31, 2001.

 

In Text Citations - Chicago Manual of Style

Chicago has two methods for providing in text citations. One utilizes notes (either footnotes or endnotes) and a bibliography while the other uses parenthetical references with author-date. We are going to concentrate on parenthetical references with author-date.

General format
(Lastname and Lastname Year, Page Numbers if needed)

General rules

  • The bibliography at the end is title either "References" or "Works Cited" and is alphabetized.
  • If there are 4 or more authors include only the first authors last name with et al. in the parenthetical reference.
  • Two or more publications by the same author and in the same year are differentiated by adding a, b, c, etc. to the year.
  • If there are two authors with the same last name, proceed the last name with the initial of their first name (e.g., J. Smith).
  • If there is not an author, use a shortened form of the title (always include the first word).
  • If there is not a date, use n.d. in the parenthetical reference. Follow the author's last name with a comma.
  • In some cases section or volume information when page numbers are not present to designate a location.

 

Help

It is a part of scholarly research to include a bibliography, works cited, or reference list as part of your paper, poster, or presentation. A bibliography is a list of print and/or electronic resources that you used information from either by direct quote or indirect quote i.e., paraphrase or that you reproduced in your work (e.g., a chart from another source).

Properly cite your information by:

  • Clearly identifying all sources used to obtain information (author and work) and
  • Precisely stating where (on which page or electronic location) or under which circumstances (personal interview, e-mail) you obtained the information.

The mechanics of citing are:

  1. Determine what you need to cite. Is it a print or electronic journal article? Should you cite the entire book or just a book chapter?
  2. Use the citation style recommended by your professor or what is commonly used in your discipline. Within the citation style guide find the formula for the type of item you have. You may have to determine if you are using a numbering scheme or author-date.
  3. Locate the necessary information from the item. Essential information is:
    1. Author(s) and maybe editor(s),
    2. Title(s) including the article or paper title and/or the title of the journal, book, or conference proceeding,
    3. Source of the information such as the publisher, publication city, or URL, and
    4. Numbers including copyright year, volume, issue, page numbers, or date accessed.
  4. Plug the information from the item into the formula. See examples for a complete citation.

 

If you need any help, just ask me.

Subjects: Engineering