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MTSM Citation Guide

A guide to using the notes-bibliography style of Turabian citation at MTSM.

Citation Guidelines: Turabian Style

MTSM students should follow the notes-bibliography style found in the most current edition of Turabian's Manual for Writers, which is summarized in this LibGuide. In notes-bibliography style, the sources in the body of your paper are cited as footnotes with a bibliography at the end of your paper. 

NOTE: Directions from your professor overrule these guidelines.

COMING SOON: Refer to the rest of this LibGuide for how to cite multi-volume sets or series, ecclesial documents, classical works, and liturgical books.

General Rules

The first time a source is cited, the footnote contains the full citation; examples in this LibGuide will be denoted [F]

1. Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum [Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation], Vatican Website, November 18, 1965, sec. 7, accessed April 25, 2015, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council /documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html (hereafter cited as DV).

Subsequent footnotes are short form with author last name, main title, and locator #s; examples will be denoted [S]

2. DV, sec. 7.

Bibliography examples will be denoted [B]

Second Vatican Council. Dei Verbum [Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation]. Vatican Website, November 18, 1965. Accessed April 25, 2015. http://www.vatican.va/ archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html.

Abbreviations & ibid.

Sometimes the main title is abbreviated, e.g., DV instead of Dei Verbum or GIRM instead of The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, especially if it is frequently mentioned in your text. Be sure to note in your first footnote that you will be using the abbreviation in subsequent footnotes (see example above). For those writing a thesis, a list of abbreviations at the beginning of your paper is recommended.

The 9th ed. of Turabian discourages the use of ibid., which comes from the Latin ibidem for “in the same place” and is used to cite a work whose citation information is exactly the same as the note directly preceding it. Use the short form instead, unless your professor prefers the use of ibid.

General rules for formatting footnotes

  1. Begin your footnote on the page on which you reference it.
  2. Font is Times New Roman, size 10, and alignment is justified.
  3. Footnotes are single-spaced within the entry and single-spaced between entries. The first line is indented 0.50”.
  4. Authors are listed first name first.
  5. Most titles of works should use headline-style capitalization, i.e. first word of the title and subtitle is capitalized and every other word is capitalized except: to, as, a, an, the, and, but, or, nor, for, of, in, at, above, under. The latter are capitalized when they are used as adverbs or adjectives.
  6. If a book is a 1st ed. or Enlarged ed., do not add that information in the citation.
  7. If a book is a 2nd ed. or has other substantial content changes (may be noted by “Revised edition”), add that to the citation in abbreviated format: 2nd ed. or rev. ed.
  8. If there are two or more cities listed for your source, include only the first.
  9. If the city of publication might be unknown or confused with another city, add the state abbreviation, province, or country. When the publisher’s name includes the state name, no state abbreviation is needed.
  10. No state abbreviation is needed for well-known cities of publication such as: Boston, Cambridge, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, Oxford, San Francisco, etc.
  11. Regarding the name of the publisher, list it as shown on the title page but omit initial "The" or abbreviations such as Inc., Ltd, Co., & Co., and Publishing Co.
  12. Hyperlinks should not be underlined or in a different color and ought to be removed. If URLs are too long, break them at appropriate points. If you are using Zotero, this should be done as a very LAST step, at the completion of the entire paper, since editing the URL directly will break the link to Zotero.
  13. You may add extra text to a footnote after the citation. If extra footnote text must run over onto a new page, break it in mid-sentence so that readers do not think they have read the entire note.
  14. Do not use more than one footnote number at the same location in the body of the text. Instead, use one footnote number and place all citations in a single note, separated by semicolons.

General rules for formatting a bibliography

  1. All cited references are listed at the end of the paper in a bibliography, in alphabetical order by author last name or by title if there is no author. When alphabetizing titles, ignore initial articles: the, an, or a.
  2. Font is Times New Roman, size 12, and alignment is justified.
  3. Each entry in the bibliography is single-spaced within the entry, double-spaced between entries. Hanging line indentation is 0.50” (i.e., all lines except the first line are indented 0.50”).
  4. If there are multiple authors, only the first author is listed last name first.
  5. If the same author (or the same group of authors) has more than one title in the bibliography, list their name(s) with the first title only, and arrange titles alphabetically. Under the subsequent titles, in place of their name(s), use a 3-em dash. To make a 3-em dash: press CTRL, ALT, and the minus sign (on the number pad) three times.
  6. Rules 5-12 for formatting footnotes also apply to bibliographies.
  7. Click here to see an example bibliography.