Chicago 18 (Author-Date) Blog Post Citation Generator

Citing a blog post (online periodical commentary) under the Chicago Manual of Style (Author-Date System) framework requires combining Chicago Manual of Style (author-date)'s punctuation hierarchy with the specific metadata of the source. To construct a compliant entry, researchers must collect the blog author (or screen name), exact date of posting (Year, Month Day), post title, overarching blog name, and direct permalink URL. In the body of your paper, Chicago Manual of Style (author-date) utilizes parenthetical author-year citations with no comma between the author and year, e.g., (Author Year, page), which links directly to an entry organized in alphabetical by author family name and chronological by publication year.

When formatting a blog post in Chicago Manual of Style (author-date), pay close attention to contributor names and capitalization. Specifically, Chicago Manual of Style (author-date) enforces inverting only the first author name (Last, First) while writing subsequent co-authors in normal order (First Last) connected by the word "and", and applies headline-style Title Case for all titles, placing analytical works in quotation marks and standalone containers in italics. Chicago Author-Date places the year immediately after the author without parentheses in the reference list, and spells out first names rather than reducing them to initials. Furthermore, if your blog post does not display an individual creator, the rule is straightforward: use the author handle/nickname if their legal name is undisclosed, or begin with the blog post title if posted by an unnamed editorial team.

For digital and online blog post references, Chicago Manual of Style (author-date) stipulates placing the DOI (https://doi.org/...) or stable URL at the very end of the entry, requiring an access date only when no publication date exists. Capture the exact day and month of publication, as blogs are chronological periodicals that often publish multiple entries per week. Using the client-side Chicago Manual of Style (author-date) Blog Post generator below, you can automatically parse URLs, DOIs, or ISBNs and apply these exact Citation Style Language (CSL) rules locally in your browser with zero server tracking.