Chicago 18 (Author-Date) Periodical Issue Citation Generator

Citing a periodical issue (special journal or magazine issue) 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 issue editor(s), publication year and month, special issue title, overarching periodical title, volume number, and issue number. 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 periodical issue 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 periodical issue does not display an individual creator, the rule is straightforward: place the guest editors of the special issue in the primary author position with an (Eds.) label, or start with the issue title.

For digital and online periodical issue 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. Include the bracketed descriptor [Special issue] where required so readers understand the citation covers an entire periodical issue. Using the client-side Chicago Manual of Style (author-date) Periodical Issue 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.