Source Note
An unnumbered note that credits the origin of a whole chapter, table, epigraph, or image.
A source note credits material as a block rather than a point. Where a footnote hangs from a specific sentence, a source note sits at the head or foot of an entire element — a chapter first published elsewhere, a table reproduced from a dataset, a photograph, an epigraph — and states where the whole thing came from.
Chicago style places the source note before any numbered notes and marks it with an asterisk or no symbol at all, precisely so it is not read as commentary on one line. For tables and figures the convention is a line beginning 'Source:' directly beneath the element; for reprinted chapters it is a paragraph on the chapter's first page beginning 'Originally published as...'.
Source notes carry legal as well as scholarly weight. Permission to reprint copyrighted material is normally granted on condition that a specified credit line appears, and the source note is where that agreed wording goes, usually verbatim as the rights holder supplied it.
Common mistake: burying a reprint credit in the endnotes. If a reader can encounter the material without encountering the credit, the credit is in the wrong place.
“Source: Adapted from the Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., s.v. "quotation."”
Keep reading the glossary
A note printed at the bottom of a page giving a citation, a qualification, or a small side-comment.
A note collected at the end of a chapter or book rather than at the foot of the page.
The list of works cited or consulted, printed at the end of a book, chapter, or article.
A US legal doctrine that permits limited quotation of copyrighted material without permission.