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Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)

View examples, get interactive practice, and format your paper with Chicago Style citation

Adding Footnotes in Word

Unlike MLA and APA, you'll be using footnotes to add your in-text documentation. (There is a version of Chicago which uses parenthetical citations -- Author-Date format -- but you're more likely to use Notes-Bibliography, which this guide focuses on.)

To add footnotes to your paper, just click the "Insert Footnote" option in Word (under References) wherever you'd normally be adding a parenthetical citation. Word will take care of all the spacing and footnote numbering for you.

Screenshot of References tab in Word, with a red arrow pointing at the "Insert Footnote" button

You will need to do some slight reformatting to your footnotes to make them fit Chicago Style. Footnotes should be single-spaced (with an empty line separating each footnote) and use a first line indent.

Screenshot comparing the default Word footnotes to footnotes adjusted to have a larger font and use first-line indentation

Our document template has already been formatted to Chicago style.

Template for Chicago Style paper

This Word doc is already set up for the notes-bibliography version of Chicago style. Just add content!


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