The Turabian style template is used in many academic subjects, including Divinity and Non-Divinity studies like History. There are separate templates for students who have less than ten pages in the body of their paper and those with many pages.
Students need to choose the appropriate Turabian style template for writing research papers.
Let us dive into what the Turabian Style is and how it is helpful in research paper writing and the Turabian Style Guide.

Firstly, What is the Turabian Style?
The Turabian Style is a Chicago style vernacular style and was designed to establish a correct way of using certain punctuation marks. Kate Turabian, a professor at the University of Chicago who created the Turabian style, refined the style to include only punctuation marks and discontinues commas in between words previously used.
The Chicago manual also features a list of common abbreviations. Famous in academic writing, the Turabian Style Template is used by universities and colleges worldwide. The writing style has been modified and updated to incorporate present-day science, technology, medicine, sociology, or other academic studies.
The current editable version is available in Word Template format. Students can download it from their university’s website for free use with their papers when turning assignments in at school (or preparing essays).

There are two forms of the Turabian Style:
Two Types of the Turabian Style
1. Note- Bibliography Style: Footnotes are located at the bottom of the page. At the end of the document, there is a bibliography.
2. Author-Date: Places an author-date citation using the parenthetical form of a name, e.g. (Smith 2011), near the content in the body of your document, and provides a bibliography at the end of your document.
Note: Please check the Turabian Template for no headings assignments and the Turabian Template with headings.
What is the Chicago Style?
The Chicago Manual of Style is a writing style guide for the United States published in 1906 and has since evolved into 17 editions. The 17 editions of the Chicago Manual of Style prescribe writing styles used in publishing.
One blank line, and then your title. No quotation marks around the title; if there are specific purposes for which you would like to quote someone’s exact words, cite them in notes instead (if these things will stay fixed with your writing). Blockquotes generally start on a new line opposite from the previous item — putting more than one active participant in quotations at once can begin to look cluttered and confusing.
The Turabian Templates are drawn from the Chicago Style, and the contributor has included short descriptions and examples of the Chicago style.
To apply the Chicago Style;
- Use the standard 12 pt. Times New Roman font.
- Double-space the lines.
- Use 1-inch margins.
- Indent each new paragraph by ½ inch, and
- Follow page numbers conventions in the top or bottom corners of the entire paper.
To apply the Turabian Style Template, there are several Turabian guidelines that you must follow.
Please read through our Turabian Style format guide below.
Turabian Style Format Guide
The Turabian Style Template is a handbook of basic formatting guidelines that will help to add consistency throughout your writing. Whether a sample paper or an academic paper, the Turabian Style Template is very different from APA Style- APA formatting, or even the MLA Style.
Let us discuss it in detail.
Notes-Bibliography Citation Style
- This is the layout style used in Turabian formats, but not the position of a specific research paper.
- Footnotes are the suggested way to cite sources throughout this spec.
- If you are including sources in your paper, you should summarize the bibliography entries at the end.
Author-Date Citation Styles
- Mostly around for book reviews only.
- Sample Paper for book review assignments.
- In author-date system format, the list of compiled resources is called References.
Formatting
- Use one-inch margins.
- Times New Roman 12 point is preferred.
- Use double spacing for every element in your paper, except block quotes, footnotes, reference lists, bibliography entries, and table titles/figure captions.
Style
- Write in the third person(she, he, it). Additionally, use an active voice and not a passive voice.
- Avoid “I,” “me,” “we,” and “us” when writing an academic paper because professors often do not want students to use their pronouns.
- When referring to an author’s work, use the present tense. Use the past tense when referring to a book or other written work from history.
- The template’s formatting already includes the spacing before each heading level from the Turabian Template.
- Name of work, names of journals, and headings are titles that should be written in headline cases. Moreover, 4+ letters must be capitalized.
- Capitalize the first letter of the first word, all proper nouns, and any words following a colon in sentences. Use capitalized words for headlines with four or five levels of headings.
- Add quotation marks around article or poems titles-shorter works. Italics for book or play titles-larger works.
Title Page
- One universal title page should be written in loose paragraph form with a hanging indent. See sample papers and Turabian templates.
- The following information is saved to the bibliography entry: book title, publisher name, line number(s), publication date, and author’s first and last names when two or more authors are arranged alphabetically on pages using Roman numerals.
Main Body
- Indent the first sentence of each paragraph.
Pagination
- Do not include a page number on the first page.
- If you want to number your pages, use lowercase Roman numerals. Always include the ii for the title page position.
- Your first level of headings should be the introduction which should be bolded.
- By integrating research that is credible and relevant to your argument, you increase the strength of your paper.
- If content comes from an external source, either credit it by using in-text links or a citation. Copying somebody else’s work without giving them credit will result in plagiarism.
Subheadings
Turabian formatting allows up to five heading and subheading levels. University guidelines for Turabian formatting are shown below.
- First level: center and bold the text in the headline case.
- Second level: center and bold text in the headline case.
- Third level: bold and left-justify the headline case.
- The fourth level: do not bold, but left-justify the headline case.
- Fifth level: Do not bold, italicize, and indent ½”, in sentence case, with a period, and begin your content on the same line.
Footnotes versus Parenthetical Citations
- Always cite another author’s work.
- Ibid. can be used for consecutive footnotes of the same resource on the same page in a notes-bibliography format and shortened notes for non-consecutive subsequent citations, even though the Turabian ninth edition manual recommends not using ibid.
- You can cite the Bible parenthetically.
Please check the Turabian Chart of Citations and the Turabian Bibliography of Reference Examples to learn more about in-text citation and reference entries.
Bible
- Authors do not need to cite full quotes from the Bible, but when they want to make a more specific observation about a reference, they will include it.
- A Bible footnote does not require a bibliography entry. You need to include an abbreviation within parentheses in the text. In order to avoid clutter and confusion, it is best to use one footnote for only one bible version rather than listing multiple versions.
- You can abbreviate the books of the Bible in the footnote or text. However, when explaining Christianity (Romans 1:16), you should use parenthesis around the abbreviation.
- The Turabian Style Template offers a list of abbreviations for the books of the Bible with sections 24.6.1-24.6.4 (sections 10.44, 10.45, 10.47, and 10.48 in the Chicago Manual of Style database on Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell Library).
Please check the Capitalization Glossary and the Sacred Book Reference List.
Bibliography
- If you are writing a note-bibliography format, use the word bibliography.
- Create a new page, and center the word ‘Bibliography.’
- Use single space while separating sentences with one blank line, but sometimes you can use two blank lines.
- When left-justifying the first line of each entry, indent lines two and more ½” from the left margin.
- Alphabetize each entry just by the first word.
- The authors’ names will be in the order of (last, first, middle).
- Include citations to the Bible and other classic texts in your paper but do not include citations in the bibliography list of references.
- Include periods after both DOIs and URLs.
- Find any scholarly articles published since 2007 by searching for the DOI on Google Scholar.
- Like most modern browsers-like wikis, include the URL and access date for online content likely to change.
Tables and Figures
Tables and figures should be identified first and numbered consecutively.
Use a different font for the title of the table or figure, boldface and large caps) followed by an equal-space indented line for each entry in that section and on every page within it.

Turabian Style Templates
The current Turabian Style Template has evolved 17 times. Turabian Style Templates for citing Bible material have been continuously used since late 1990. Their development was motivated by fear and loathing of the Chicago Manual style, which prohibited most uses of certain words in Bible references.
Today, the Turabian Style Template acts as a canonical document: whereas each style manual reappears in print every few decades, the Turabian Style Template appears in print every few years.

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