Learn English – Proper way to cite Wikipedia according to the Chicago Manual of Style

citation

In The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed., it actually lists two ways to cite Wikipedia content. The first, in section 14.245, is of the form:

The second, in section 14.248, is of the form:

It's not clear which form to use when. That aside, what if I want to refer to a particular section for an entry. For example, assuming I use the second form above, I could do:

In order to put the name of the section in italics, I thought it best to un-italicize "Wikipedia." Thoughts?

Best Answer

With regards to your first question of, it's not clear which to use when, I think it might be a matter of how you think about Wikipedia, and how you're using it in your paper:

  • if you think of it as an online encyclopedia, then you go with 14.248 (because the heading there is Dictionaries and encyclopedias online", and other examples in the list include the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online and the MW Online)
  • if you think of it as just a website with content you're using, then go with 14.245 (aka "Citations of web content").

As for your second question, I would go with:

Wikipedia, s.v. "Trolley Pole: Origin of the Term," last modified Mar 22, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_pole.

...but you definitely need to keep the italics in the same place as in the example they provided!

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