Chicago Style Guide in LaTeX

A comprehensive guide for formatting LaTeX documents using the Chicago Manual of Style (Notes and Bibliography).

This repository provides structured instructions, templates, and scripts to facilitate document preparation in LaTeX while adhering to Chicago-style formatting. The same content is available in three formats:

• Markdown (.md) – Easier to read and edit as plain text.
• LaTeX (.tex) – Best for generating PDFs with proper formatting.
• XML (.xml) – Optimized for structured data processing and AI usage.

Table of Contents

• Install
• Usage
• Compile Script
• Maintainers

Install

Prerequisites

Ensure you have a LaTeX distribution with XeLaTeX and Biber installed. The recommended distributions for various platforms:

• macOS (via MacTeX): Download and install MacTeX, which includes XeLaTeX and Biber.

  brew install biber

• Linux (Debian/Ubuntu):

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install texlive-xetex texlive-bibtex-extra biber

• Linux (Arch-based):

  sudo pacman -Syu texlive-core texlive-bibtexextra biber

• Windows: Install TeX Live and ensure xelatex and biber are added to your system PATH.

Cloning the Repository

git clone https://github.com/kgruiz/Chicago-Style-Guide.git
cd Chicago-Style-Guide

Usage

This repository contains structured guides for formatting LaTeX documents according to the Chicago Manual of Style. Choose the appropriate section based on your needs:

• Overall Document Formatting (Overall/)

  Provides guidelines for setting up LaTeX documents, including:

  • Document class selection
  • Page layout configuration
  • Font settings
  • Header and footer formatting
  • Enabling double-spacing

  For compilation, refer to the Compile Script section.

• Chicago-Style Citations (Citations/)

  Contains detailed instructions for using the biblatex-chicago package to manage citations. Includes:

  • Configuration of Chicago-style footnotes and bibliography
  • Sample .bib file with references
  • Citation commands (\autocite, \footcite, etc.)
  • Example LaTeX document demonstrating correct formatting

  For compilation, refer to the Compile Script section.

Compile Script

The repository includes an automation script (compile.zsh) that simplifies the compilation process by logging output and cleaning up auxiliary files if no errors occur. Customize the TEX_FILE and LOG_FILE variables at the top of the script as needed.

To run the script:

Run this once to make it executable:

chmod +x compile.zsh

Then execute it:

./compile.zsh

Alternatively, run without changing permissions:

zsh compile.zsh

Maintainers

• Kaden Gruizenga – (kgruiz@umich.edu)