Writing and Style Guide  

Welcome to the Writing and Style Guide – a repository of documents, files, and templates intended to assist students writing theses and papers at Luther Seminary.

Questions concerning the use or interpretation of this guide may be addressed to any of the persons listed in the Contact Us tab above.. 

Copies of The Chicago Manual of Style (16^th edition, 2010), Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (7^th edition, 2007), and the SBL Handbook of Style (1999) are available for consultation at the library circulation desk.  In addition, the Chicago Manual of Style is also available online.  See the box to the right.

This guide exists to help Luther Seminary students prepare classroom research papers and theses required for degree completion.  The tabs across the top contain information about the areas of academic writing, documenting sources, and formatting papers.  These are summarized as follows:

Writing Center

This tab introduces the Center for Writing office on campus and the services it offers.  Handouts which address common writing issues are also located here.

Documenting Sources

The next three tabs provide a convenient way to consult footnote and bibliography examples according to the Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition (2010) and its derivative, Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th edition (2007).  Chicago/Turabian is the recognized style convention for classroom research papers and theses submitted at Luther Seminary.

Formatting Matters

Two tabs provide information on how to utilize templates and EndNote, a bibliographic citation manager, to automate a great deal of the process of producing a reseach paper or thesis with the proper style and formatting.

Institutional Style and Format Requirements

This tab outlines style and format requirements specific to Luther Seminary. All students writing thesis proposals or final theses should, in particular, carefully review this information.

NEW!   The library has subscribed to the online versiion of the Chicago Manual of Style.  It is available using the link below.  The full content of both the 16th and the 15th editions can be browsed or searched. 

The websites listed here provide additional help and examples in using Chicago/Turabian style: