Turabian vs Chicago: Student Handbook or CMOS 18?

Turabian vs Chicago: Quick Answer

Use Turabian 9 for a course paper, thesis, or dissertation office that has not issued a CMOS 18 addendum. Use CMOS 18 for a journal, press, or house style that names the 18th edition. Then pick one citation system — notes-bibliography or author-date — and keep it for the whole draft. The Chicago vs Turabian comparison table lists shared CSL facts. This page is the edition-and-venue decision: which book is live, which official samples prove it, and how to restyle one set of notes into the other.

Start with the venue, not the brand name

A syllabus that says "Chicago," a history department that says "Turabian," and a journal that says "Chicago Manual of Style" are not asking for three citation languages. They are naming a reader. Ask four questions before you format the first note.

1. Name the reader. A course paper, thesis office, or dissertation template is almost always Turabian 9. A book manuscript, journal, or press copyeditor is CMOS 18 unless the house style still cites the 17th edition.
2. Name the edition. The official Turabian home page still describes the ninth edition as "updated to reflect The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition." CMOS 18 shipped in September 2024.
3. Name the system. Both books teach notes-bibliography and author-date. Switching manuals later is a restyle. Switching systems later is a rewrite of every citation.
4. Apply only that rule set. Do not mix a Turabian 9 title page with CMOS 18 author cutoffs, or a CMOS 18 book entry with a Turabian 9 city, unless the instructor's handout says to.

University libguides often blur the same two books. Pitt's Chicago 18th / Turabian 9th page still reprints the old CMOS 17 Pollan book note with "New York: Penguin" while labeling the page for both editions. CSB/SJU is clearer: Turabian 9 uses CMOS 17 examples, and many database "Cite" buttons have not moved to CMOS 18. Trust the official quick guides, not the first campus chart that says the formats are identical.

What Turabian and Chicago actually are

Kate Turabian and the student handbook

Kate L. Turabian was dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1958. In 1937 she published a short guide so students could meet Chicago's documentation rules without reading the full press manual. The current live book, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, ninth edition (2018), is still the student edition of that project. The University of Chicago Press ninth-edition page and the Turabian site both describe it as Chicago style for students and researchers, not as a third major style beside APA or MLA.

The official relationship — and the edition lag

The Turabian Citation Quick Guide is explicit that the two student systems are Chicago-style citations. That sentence is still true for Turabian 9 against CMOS 17. It is no longer a safe summary against CMOS 18. The professional manual moved; the live student handbook and student tip sheets have not yet been rewritten to follow it.

• Same family: both books teach notes-bibliography and author-date, with hanging-indent reference lists and title-case titles for most sources.
• Same publisher: University of Chicago Press maintains both the CMOS citation guides and the Turabian citation guides.
• Different jobs: CMOS is a publishing manual. Turabian adds research design, argument, and student paper-format tip sheets.
• Different current editions: CMOS 18 (2024) versus Turabian 9 / CMOS 17 (2018). A generator that says only "Chicago" may emit either rule set.

The 2026 edition gap: Turabian 9 vs CMOS 18

This is the difference most Turabian vs Chicago pages still miss. They compare audiences and page counts, then print one invented book citation and call the formats identical. After September 2024, several everyday rules diverged. The CMOS 18 What's New list is the authority for the professional side; the Turabian notes and author-date quick guides are the authority for the student side. The live CMOS samples are no longer Zadie Smith and Brian Grazer; those 17th-edition Quick Guide books were replaced by Charles Yu and Amy J. Binder.

Turabian's own notes guide still says the opposite on author counts. A three-author article that Turabian spells out in the footnote becomes first-author-plus-et-al. under CMOS 18. A seven-author article that Turabian lists in full becomes first-three-plus-et-al. in a CMOS 18 bibliography.

Turabian 10 is announced — it is not yet the live handbook

The University of Chicago Press tenth-edition page announces A Manual for Writers, tenth edition, revised by Joseph Bizup, William T. FitzGerald, Juli Parrish, and the Press editorial staff. The Press copy says the new edition "has been updated to reflect the most current editions of The Craft of Research and The Chicago Manual of Style" and adds extensive coverage of generative AI, a rewritten chapter on visual communication, and new notes on how to use the book. The announced table of contents keeps notes-bibliography in chapters 16–17 and author-date in 18–19, and it adds "Datasets and AI" at 17.12 and 19.12. Retail listings opened on 13 September 2026, including Brookline Booksmith, give 24 November 2026 as the publication date. Earlier 8 October 2026 listings are stale.

Until that book is the one your instructor or thesis office names, do not treat Turabian 10 as current. The official Turabian home page, Citation Quick Guide, and student tip sheets still describe the ninth edition and CMOS 17. This guide does not invent Turabian 10 citation examples from a book that is not yet the classroom standard.

Notes-bibliography or author-date

Both manuals offer the same two systems. If the assignment only says "Chicago" or "Turabian," the missing decision is usually the system, not the brand. The Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide is the professional wording; Turabian's student guide teaches the same split.

Restyle advice: moving a notes paper from Turabian 9 to CMOS 18 is mechanical (cities, author cutoffs, chapter spans, repeated names). Moving the same paper from notes-bibliography to author-date is not. Every superscript becomes a parenthesis, the bibliography becomes a reference list, and the year changes slot. Do that only when the venue requires it. The Chicago footnote generator covers notes; the in-text citation generator covers author-date.

Official citation examples: Turabian 9 and CMOS 18

The Turabian samples below are copied from the official notes and author-date quick guides. The CMOS 18 lines are the current Notes and Bibliography and Author-Date samples (Charles Yu; Amy J. Binder; Hyeyoung Kwon; Kathleen Doyle; Yuna Blajer de la Garza). Formatted citations of English-language works stay in English. Do not invent a third hybrid, and do not treat a restyled Kitamura line as an official CMOS sample.

Book: the city of publication is the tell

Turabian 9 still prints the city. CMOS 18's notes guide opens the book examples with the reminder that a place of publication is no longer required. If a generated "Chicago" book line still begins New York: or Oakland:, it is following Turabian 9 / CMOS 17 — which is correct for most student papers and outdated for a CMOS 18 manuscript.

For more book patterns after you have chosen an edition, use how to cite a book in Chicago. That page is a source workflow, not this comparison.

The pre-1900 exception: keep the city, drop the publisher

CMOS 14.30 retired the city for modern books. CMOS 14.31 still cites some pre-1900 books by place instead of publisher. The official Notes guide uses Melville. Turabian 9 has no matching exception on its quick guide because it still wants a city for every modern book.

Three authors: where et al. now starts

Turabian 9 still names all three authors in the first note. CMOS 18 cuts to the first name plus et al. as soon as a work has three authors. The official Turabian sample is Shao-Hsun Keng, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem. CMOS 18's current Quick Guide does not reprint a three-author article, so the CMOS column below is that same official Turabian article restyled — labeled as a restyle, not as a CMOS sample.

Seven authors: the bibliography cutoff moves

The official Turabian notes guide uses Jesse N. Weber and six coauthors to show the old student cutoff: four or more authors become et al. in the note, but the bibliography still lists every name up to ten. The official CMOS 18 sample is Carl D. Snyder and six coauthors: et al. in the note, and the bibliography shortens after six names to the first three plus et al. CMOS 14.71 also lets the Snyder bibliography use an article ID instead of a page span.

Chapter in an edited book: drop the bibliography page span

Turabian 9 still wants the chapter's page range in the bibliography. CMOS 14.8 no longer does. The note still cites the pages you used. Compare the official Turabian Rowlandson chapter with the official CMOS 18 Doyle chapter.

Journal article with a DOI

Both manuals prefer a https://doi.org/ link over the database URL in the browser bar. Turabian 9 usually keeps the month or season; CMOS 18 usually drops it. The official Turabian notes sample is Ashley Hope Pérez in Modern Philology. The official CMOS 18 notes sample is Hyeyoung Kwon in American Journal of Sociology. For more CMOS 18 journal patterns, see how to cite a journal article in Chicago.

Dissertation: same quotation-mark rule, different official sample

Both manuals cite a dissertation as an unpublished book-length work: the title stays in quotation marks, and the degree, university, and year stand in for publisher data. The official Turabian sample is Guadalupe Navarro-Garcia (ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, no numeric ID). The official CMOS 18 sample is Yuna Blajer de la Garza, and the Author-Date Quick Guide adds a ProQuest number in parentheses. For the source workflow, use citing a dissertation in Chicago.

Website: access date versus Wayback

Turabian 9 still treats an access date as the normal rescue when a page has no publication or revision date (Columbia "History"). CMOS 18 still allows that access date, but it now prefers a publicly archived URL when one exists (Yale Facts on the Wayback Machine, 14.104). Do not add a routine access date to a dated CMOS 18 page.

Social media: 160 versus 280 characters

When a post needs a title slot, Turabian 9 still quotes the first 160 characters. CMOS 18 quotes the first 280. That is a CMOS 14.106 update, not a new student-handbook rule.

Student paper format is Turabian's extra job

Citation format is the overlapping middle of the two books. Paper format is where Turabian earns its own purchase. CMOS chapters 1–4 tell publishers how to make books and journals. Turabian's appendix and the official student paper-formatting tip sheets tell students how to make a course paper.

• Margins: at least one inch on all sides, except the half-inch clearance around a header or footer page number.
• Title page: no page number on the title page, but count it as page 1 (or as page i if the front matter uses roman numerals). Center the title about one-third of the way down; put name, course, and date about two-thirds down.
• Body: double-space the prose. Single-space notes, bibliography or reference-list entries, block quotations, table titles, and figure captions, with a blank line between entries.
• Notes vs bibliography: footnotes or endnotes are a venue choice; the bibliography still starts on a new page. Author-date papers use a reference list instead.
• Headings: Turabian's student hierarchy is not CMOS book design. For rank, typeface, and title case, use headings and subheadings rather than copying a journal's layout.
• Theses: dissertation offices often ship a local template that overrides Turabian's sample title page. See citing a dissertation in Chicago for the source type, and follow the office PDF for the wrapper.

CMOS 18 still matters for student writers on points that are not "paper format": inclusive language, singular they, and the new AI guidance at 14.112. Those are publishing-manual updates that many instructors will accept even while they still want Turabian 9 notes. Ask before you silently upgrade. For chatbot output, see how to cite AI rather than inventing a Turabian 9 AI format.

When a syllabus says Chicago but means Turabian

Discipline exceptions matter more than the brand on the cover. History, art history, religious studies, and many music and literature courses want notes-bibliography and a student title page. Political science, anthropology, and some area-studies courses want author-date and will still call it Chicago. Theology programs sometimes specify Turabian by name because the dissertation office already owns the template. Journalism and trade publishing want CMOS, not a student title page. If you need the field map rather than this edition workflow, use citation styles by discipline or the Chicago and Turabian style pages.

Use Turabian 9 when

• The assignment is an undergraduate or master's course paper.
• A thesis or dissertation office issues a Turabian template, or names A Manual for Writers.
• The prompt says "Chicago" and the only other instruction is a title page, 1-inch margins, and footnotes.
• You need the research-and-writing chapters (questions, sources, drafting) that CMOS does not try to be.
• The instructor's sample bibliography still shows cities of publication.

Use CMOS 18 when

• You are submitting to a journal, magazine, or book press that cites the 18th edition.
• A copyeditor, managing editor, or house-style sheet is the reader.
• The venue's own examples omit the city, use et al. from three authors, or repeat names instead of a 3-em dash.
• You need a rule CMOS 18 added and Turabian 9 never had — AI-generated text (14.112), Wayback citations (14.104), or Indigenous sources (14.136–37).
• You are editing or producing a manuscript, not handing in a seminar paper.

How to restyle Turabian 9 citations to CMOS 18

Do this only after the venue confirms CMOS 18. Keep the same system. Then walk the list once. The book citation generator and Chicago footnote generator can draft the line; they cannot see whether your department still wants the city.

1. Delete the city from every post-1900 book, chapter, and ebook entry. Keep a place only for the rare pre-1900 book that CMOS 14.31 still cites by city instead of publisher.
2. Shorten three-author notes to First Author et al. Leave two-author notes as "and."
3. Shorten bibliographies after six names to the first three plus et al. Do not put et al. in a two-author or six-author list.
4. Drop chapter page ranges from bibliography and reference-list entries. Keep the pages you cite in the note or parenthetical.
5. Drop most journal months and seasons unless the issue is otherwise hard to find.
6. Repeat author names for several works by the same person. Replace any leftover 3-em dashes.
7. Check websites and AI. CMOS 18 prefers a revision date or a Wayback URL over a routine access date, and it keeps chatbot output in the text or a note.

Going the other way — CMOS 18 down to Turabian 9 — is what most undergraduates actually need when a generator has already dropped the cities. Put the city back, spell three authors in the first note, restore chapter page spans, and keep the month if the official Turabian sample for that source type shows one.

Official sources

Read the University of Chicago Press pages before you trust a generator or a classroom handout that still says the formats are identical. The Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide, the notes-bibliography and author-date CMOS samples, the Turabian notes and Turabian author-date guides, and What's New in the 18th Edition are the primary texts behind every example on this page.

Related guides

• Chicago vs Turabian: side-by-side table
• APA vs Chicago: key differences and when to use each
• MLA vs Chicago: choosing the right style for humanities
• How to cite a book in Chicago style
• How to cite a journal article in Chicago
• How to cite a dissertation in Chicago
• Citation styles by discipline