CMS format

Academic English > CMS format

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) is used in some social science publications and most historical journals. It remains the basis for the Style Guide of the American Anthropological Association and the Style Sheet for the Organization of American Historians. In distinction to the APA format, CMS offers writers a choice of several different formats and actually permits the mixing of formats, provided that the result is clear and consistent. It also provides a comprehensive formatting and styling guide (the layout and structure of your writing) and additionally covers, inter alia, plagiarism, language tone, construction of tables and graphs.

Take a look at the two article extracts below, both use the CMS reference format.

Alexander, James. “The Four Points of the Compass,” Philosophy, 87, no.1(2012):79-107.
Donahue, T. J. “Terrorism, Moral Conceptions, and Moral Innocence,” The Philosophical Forum, 44, no.4(2013):413–435.


CMS referencing presentation

Plagiarism check-list

CMS referencing guide

Referencing & Paraphrasing

Tasks: Referencing & Paraphrasing

Sample document format

The pages below show a sample document using CMS note-bibliography format.

CMS-sample-document-01

CMS-sample-document-02

CMS-sample-document-03

CMS-sample-document-04

CMS-sample-document-05

CMS-sample-document-06

CMS-sample-document-07

CMS-sample-document-08

CMS-sample-document-09

CMS-sample-document-10

Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007).