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Chicago Referencing Guide: Missing Elements

This page contains information on what to do if there are certain reference list elements missing in a source you want to cite or other unusual things.

Author

Group author

Some sources like webpages and newspapers do not always have individual authors listed. In that case you list the company/organisation/newspaper that the item belongs to. This is known as a 'Group Author'.

Group authors need capital letters for the main words of their name, and they still need a full stop at the end of the name and before the date. 

For newspapers the name of the newspaper is in italics Title Case in the Reference List and In-Text.

See also the entry for Group/Organisations under the Books section of this guide and the entry for News & Magazines.

Reference List

Ministry of Education. 1996. Te Whāriki: Early Childhood Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media.

New York Times. 2002. “In Texas, Ad Heats Up Race for Governor.” July 30, 2002. URL

In-Text

(Ministry of Education 1996).

 

(New York Times 2002).

 

No author

If no personal author is given for items other then a website or newspaper, most likely this will be a source that is not peer-reviewed perhaps from a trade magazine or journal, if you are sure that your source is credible, follow these guidelines:

  • Use the title of the work in place of the author in the in-text citation and in the reference list
  • If the title is too long, you can shorten it in the in-text citation but always include the first word of the title
  • Enclose the title in quotation marks in both the in-text and reference list
  • Use title case capitalisation (all major words start with a capital letter) for the title in the in-text and the reference list

Date

Multiple works by the same author with the same date

If you have multiple works by the same author and they have the same date, list them in alphabetical order by their titles and add lower case letters (a,b,c) immediately after the year (i.e. the letters after the date are determined by the alphabetical order of the titles, not the order of use within the text).

This allows your reader to determine which source by that author was used for a specific piece of information. If you found two sources by the same author but there was no date on either source, you would use the same guidelines but add a dash before the letter e.g. (n.d.-a). This also applies to the in-text citations as well.

McMillan, Chris, 2024a. Cricket...

AND 

McMillan, Chris, 2024b. "Inclusivity"...

No date

Some sources may not have a date of publication mentioned. If that is the case, use n.d. which means 'no date' in place of the year.

Reference List

Dinkel, Joseph. n.d. Description of Louis Agassiz written at the request of Elizabeth Cary Agassiz. Agassiz Papers. Houghton Library, Harvard University.

In-Text

... (Dinkel, n.d.).

OR

Dinkel (n.d.) ...

Title

No official title

If you come across a source with no official title, you can make one up which best describes the source.

Smith, John. 2020. "Journal article about Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution..."

Source details

No city of publication

When the place of publication is not known, the abbreviation n.p (meaning "no place") may be used before the publisher's name. If the place can be reasonably guessed, it may be given with a question mark in square brackets.

n.p: ABC Publishers

[Morrinsville, NZ?]: Big Book Publishers 

City of publication not well known

If the City of publication is not well known or may be confused with another city of the same name, then the state or province code (if in the US) or country should be added. When the publisher's name includes the city, then the state code is not needed. 

Palmerston North: Massey University Press

Hamilton, New Zealand: ABC Publisher

Charleston, NC: Big Book Publishers