How to Cite a Magazine Article in Chicago Style

How to Cite a Magazine Article in Chicago: Quick Answer

Name the writer if there is a byline, put the article title in quotation marks, italicize the magazine, and give month, day, and year as the issue printed them. Weekly and monthly magazines are cited by that date even when a volume and issue number sit on the masthead. In a note you may add a page you actually quoted. Inclusive page ranges do not belong in the bibliography, because magazine features often jump over ads. For an online piece, add a URL or, if that URL is a poor substitute, the name of the library database. Cite the copy you read: a New Yorker print department title is not the live web headline, and a monthly cover is not the earlier web-publish date.

Author-date already places the year after the name. Do not write the year a second time after the month and day. That is a CMOS 18 habit. The still-current Turabian 9th-edition Author-Date Quick Guide says it can be helpful to repeat the year; do not treat that student handbook as CMOS 18. The atomic how-to-cite page shows one formatted magazine; this guide is the workflow around it.

Official CMOS 18 Wording

Purdue OWL’s CMOS 18 periodicals page restates the same date-only rule and adds the department-title habit: regular departments are capitalized and not placed in quotation marks. SNHU reprints the official Mead and Klein Quick Guide lines under §14.87.

Official Quick Guide Magazine Samples

The Quick Guide “News or magazine article” family mixes newspapers and magazines. The newspaper page already owns Blum and Pegoraro. This page owns the two magazine specimens: Rebecca Mead’s print New Yorker feature and Elana Klein’s online Wired story. Those lines are official CMOS 18 samples, not stand-ins.

The Quick Guide models the print issue: department title “Terms of Aggrievement,” cover date December 18, 2023, a quoted page in the note, and no URL. The 18 December 2023 issue still hosts that Leo Reich profile. The live online file uses a different headline and an earlier web date.

Klein is still the official online-magazine specimen: cover date, no volume or issue, a stable story URL, and no page numbers. The live Wired file, checked 12 October 2026, still uses that headline and the 21 December 2023 stamp. If your assignment names notes-bibliography or author-date, follow that instruction. If it only says “Chicago,” history and most humanities courses want notes and a bibliography.

Magazine, Journal, or Newspaper?

Students lose points when they force a New Yorker feature into the journal pattern or treat Harper's Magazine like a daily paper. A scholarly journal is built to be retrieved by volume, issue, page range, and often a DOI. A magazine is built to be retrieved by the week or month on the cover. A newspaper is a dated dispatch that may exist in several editions the same day. Chicago’s magazine rules sit next door to its newspaper rules, but the two pages are not interchangeable: magazines more often have a useful note page, they rarely need an edition statement, and a long feature is more likely to earn a bibliography line.

A science story in Scientific American is still a magazine article even when it reports a journal study. Cite the magazine you read. If you later quote the underlying journal article, that second source uses the journal pattern. For help telling popular periodicals from scholarly ones, see Scholarly vs Popular Sources.

Current Edition: Chicago 18th (2024)

Cite magazines from The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition, published by the University of Chicago Press in September 2024. Older handouts still describe the 17th edition (2017), where the same date-only rule lived at §14.188. CMOS 18 moved magazines to §§14.87–14.88 and newspapers to §§14.89–14.98.

Turabian 9th edition is still the live student handbook on CMOS.org, and it follows CMOS 17. Its Author-Date Quick Guide still repeats the year after month and day. The Turabian home page still advertises the ninth edition and CMOS 17. The University of Chicago Press lists Turabian 10 hardcover for 8 October 2026 and paperback for 24 November 2026; as of 12 October 2026 the live student Quick Guides have not switched. Do not write that Turabian 9 implements CMOS 18, and do not treat a bookstore listing as the handbook your course is using.

Three 18th-edition habits show up constantly. First, an initial The is capitalized and italicized in running text when it is part of the official name — write The New Yorker or The Atlantic in a sentence — but CMOS still lets you drop The in the source citation. The Quick Guide examples use New Yorker and Wired. Second, an author-date reference already carries the year after the writer’s name, so the month and day after the magazine title do not repeat that year. Third, a specific page belongs in a note when you have the print issue; the bibliography still omits the inclusive span.

Notes-Bibliography Format

In notes-bibliography, the first citation is a full footnote or endnote. Later citations use a shortened note: family name plus a shortened title. CMOS 13.32–13.39 is the general shortened-note rule. Keep the words that identify the feature — Klein’s “Meet Flip, the Viral Video App Giving Away Free Stuff” shortens to “Meet Flip.” CMOS 18 prefers that shortened form over ibid.

Weekly print feature

Jill Lepore’s Wonder Woman essay ran in the 22 September 2014 New Yorker under the department title “The Last Amazon.” The Michigan State comic-art catalog records it as volume 90, no. 28 (22 September 2014): 64–73, with the contents-page subtitle “Wonder Woman's Secret Past.” The live file at newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/last-amazon still uses that H1 and still displays September 15, 2014 as the web date; the browser title is the contents subtitle. CMOS wants the cover date in the /2014/09/22/ path. Cite the copy you read. If you have the print issue and quote a page, put that page in the note only. Do not write the journal pattern New Yorker 90, no. 28 (2014): 64–73.

Monthly magazine

Monthly magazines often print only a month and year. Rebecca Solnit’s essay “The Mother of All Questions” appeared in the October 2015 Harper's Magazine and is still archived at harpers.org/archive/2015/10/the-mother-of-all-questions/. Do not invent a day the cover does not show.

Combined season or double issue

Some magazines print a joined date on the cover. Sarah Elizabeth Adler’s “The Power of Negative Thinking” is the January/February 2018 Atlantic feature at theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/the-power-of-negativity/546560/. The live author page dates the same file 12 December 2017. Keep the slash the magazine used. Do not recast the issue as “January 2018” merely because the URL contains /2018/01/, and do not swap in the December web date if you are citing the print issue.

Science magazine reporting a study

Jason G. Goldman’s “Lizards Learn a Silly Walk after Losing Their Tails” is the December 2017 Scientific American report at scientificamerican.com/article/lizards-learn-a-silly-walk-after-losing-their-tails/. The public page, checked 12 October 2026, stamps December 1, 2017, and the issue folder is /issue/sa/2017/12-01/. That day is how Scientific American files the December issue, not a reason to cite the piece as a journal. CMOS wants the monthly cover: December 2017. Do not write volume 317, no. 6. Cite Scientific American, not the Scientific Reports paper Goldman summarizes, unless you also read that paper.

Unsigned magazine article

Do not write Anonymous. CMOS 14.87: if an unsigned article is listed in the bibliography, the magazine title stands in the author position so the item sorts under the publication. In a note you may begin with the article title. Do not copy a library handout that treats a signed feature as unsigned. Shorter University’s CMOS 18 magazine table lists Vanity Fair “It Happened in Hitsville” (December 2008) that way; the live archive byline is Lisa Robinson. For more missing-author cases, see How to Cite a Source with No Author.

Database instead of a session URL

When you read a magazine through EBSCOhost, ProQuest, Gale, or a publisher archive, the address bar is often a long proxy string that dies when your session ends. CMOS 14.87 prefers a stable article URL when one exists. If the only locator is that session string, name the database and stop. Do not cite the database as if it were the magazine, and do not add “Retrieved from.” The Quick Guide’s Pegoraro line on the newspaper page is the official database specimen in this family: Washington Post plus LexisNexis Academic, not a proxy URL.

Douglas College reprints a CBCA Complete magazine line for Terry Glavin. The library record uses the print title “The Battle to Clean Up Vancouver,” Maclean's, February 9, 2018, pages 13–14. The public Maclean's file is headed “The battle to clean up B.C.” and dated 7 February 2018. If you held the database PDF, keep the database title, cover date, and database name. If you read the website, use the live headline and URL. Do not mix those two copies.

Do magazine articles belong in the bibliography?

Sometimes. CMOS 14.96 says magazine pieces, like newspaper stories, can be cited in notes or in the text without a matching bibliography entry. That option exists for a passing mention. A 6,000-word New Yorker feature you analyze for ten pages is not a passing mention. Include a bibliography entry when the magazine is a main source, when you cite several pieces from the same title, or when the syllabus wants every note source listed.

Author-Date Format

Author-date moves the year beside the name and drops footnotes. The parenthetical citation is (Last Name Year, page). The reference-list entry still italicizes the magazine and still uses the cover date — it simply places the year after the writer and does not repeat that year after the month and day. The author-date Quick Guide uses the same news-or-magazine family as the notes guide.

Wrong in CMOS 18: Lepore, Jill. 2014. “The Last Amazon.” New Yorker, September 22, 2014. Right: the year appears once, after the name. If you have no date at all, see How to Cite a Source with No Date and add an access date only when CMOS requires one.

Book Reviews, Departments, and Sunday Magazines

A review in a magazine follows CMOS 14.100: after the review headline, add “review of Book Title, by Book Author,” then the magazine and date. The Quick Guide’s official review sample is a newspaper line — Alexandra Jacobs on Mary Gabriel’s Madonna: A Rebel Life in the New York Times — and lives on the newspaper page. Magazine reviews use the same pattern. Regular departments (Talk of the Town, The Mail) are capitalized and not placed in quotation marks; the specific piece still takes quotation marks if it has its own title. A Sunday newspaper magazine is cited under that magazine title — New York Times Magazine, not New York Times — and otherwise follows this page rather than the daily-paper page.

Letters to the editor are usually notes only: First Name Last Name, letter to the editor, Magazine Title, Month Day, Year. Do not invent a correspondent. Cite the letter you actually have.

When a Magazine Is the Right Source

Long-form magazines are not automatically weaker than journals. For cultural history, contemporary reporting, and public argument, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper's Magazine are standard evidence. Treat them as what they are: edited journalism, not peer-reviewed research. When you need the study behind a science feature, go to the journal. When you need a contemporary reaction to an event, the magazine feature is the primary source — the same way a historical newspaper is. Record the cover date carefully; later web updates can change wording, and New Yorker online files often display a web date that is not the issue date.

Common Errors

1. Citing a magazine as if it were a journal

Do not write New Yorker 90, no. 28 (2014): 64–73 for Lepore, or Scientific American 317, no. 6 for Goldman. CMOS wants September 22, 2014 and December 2017. Volume and issue are extra, not a substitute for the date.

2. Copying the web headline and the web date

The official Mead sample is “Terms of Aggrievement,” December 18, 2023, page 21. The public file uses a different headline and shows December 8. Lepore’s public file shows September 15 and a browser title “Wonder Woman's Secret Past”; the issue is September 22 and the H1 is “The Last Amazon.” Cunningham’s Turabian sample is “You Don’t Understand”; the live file is “The Case for Black English,” dated May 8. Adler’s author page shows December 12, 2017; the issue is January/February 2018. Cite the version you used. Do not invent the print title or the note page if you only had the website.

3. Inventing a day, a page, or a DOI

A monthly cover that says “October 2015” is cited as October 2015. Goldman’s public stamp of December 1 is the issue-folder day, not a reason to add a day the monthly cover does not need. Online magazines often have no stable pagination and no DOI. Omit both rather than guessing. An access date is unnecessary when the publication date is printed on the story.

4. Repeating the year in CMOS 18 author-date

Once the year sits after the name, the rest of the date is month and day only. This is the same CMOS 18 habit the newspaper page teaches at §14.89. Turabian 9 may still repeat the year; that is a different handbook.

5. Pasting a proxy or tracking URL

Cite the canonical story URL. Strip utm_ tags. If the only address is a campus-proxy session string, name the database instead.

6. Mixing The in prose and in citations

In a sentence, write The New Yorker when that is the official name. In citations, drop The and stay consistent: New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, Wired.

7. Treating the database as the publication

EBSCOhost and ProQuest are how you opened the file. The source is still Time or Atlantic. Name the database only as a locator. Douglas’s Glavin line is Maclean's plus CBCA Complete, not “CBCA Complete” as the magazine.

A Practical Workflow

Then format once in the system your course named. The Chicago generator and the magazine citation generator will arrange the same fields. The Chicago cheat sheet is the punctuation reminder. For APA’s version of the same source type, see How to Cite a Magazine Article in APA.

Related Guides

• How to Cite a Newspaper Article in Chicago Style
• How to Cite a Journal Article in Chicago Style
• How to Cite a Website in Chicago Style
• How to Cite a Magazine Article in APA
• Turabian vs Chicago
• Scholarly vs Popular Sources
• How to Cite a Source with No Author
• Chicago notes-bibliography style page
• Chicago author-date style page
• Chicago cheat sheet