Most history instructors and some humanities instructors require you to document sources with footnotes or endnotes based on The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

You face three main challenges when you write a paper that draws on sources: (1) supporting a thesis, (2) citing your sources and avoiding plagiarism, and (3) integrating quotations and other source material.

Examples in this section appear in CMS (Chicago) style and are drawn from one student's research on the Fort Pillow massacre, which occurred during the Civil War. Sample pages from Ned Bishop's paper are in CMS-5b.