According to the MHRA Style Guide, this item should be cited in a bibliography as follows:

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 18 (Legenda), pp. 1–32, doi:10.2307/j.ctv1wsgqzv.5

This is in the author-date variant of MHRA style. MHRA's journals don't allow author-date citation, but some of its book series (notably Legenda) do: please talk to your editor before using this. (To see the demonstration for regular style instead, follow this link.)

Let's take this bibliography entry one step at a time:

Step 1. We start with the name(s) of the author(s) of the article, inverting the first name into the form 'Forename, Surname'.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar

Step 2. In author-date style, we have a full stop, then the year, then another full stop. If there are multiple entries with the same author and year, letters would be used to distinguish them: e.g., Bloggs 1994a, Bloggs 1994b.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021.

Step 3. Now we add the title, in single inverted commas. Any single quotation marks already in the title must be converted to doubles.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’

Step 4. We have to say where this comes from, so:

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in

Step 5. Next, the author(s) of the book, which come before the title because this is a monograph.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in Diestro-Dópido, Mar

Step 6. Now a full stop, the year of publication, and another a full stop:

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021.

Step 7. Here we have the book's title, in italics, not quotation marks.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange

Step 8. This book belongs to a series, so we'll name that. If the series is numbered, we give the number, too. No italics, no quotation marks in the series name.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 18

Step 9. Since this is a book, not a journal issue, we have to identify its source, in round brackets. Until 2024, MHRA style required a place of publication - for example, New York or Oxford. This is no longer given except in special circumstances.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 18 (

Step 10. Now a colon, a space, and the publisher's name. Here that's Legenda because this is the imprint name under which the book is published, even though Legenda is not strictly speaking a company. To decide these things, one must look at the exact wording of the preliminary pages. Our preference is for Legenda books to be cited as 'Legenda', and we word our preliminaries with that aim.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 18 (Legenda

Step 11. Since we had the date of first publication up front, we don't need it here, so we're done with the bracketed part.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 18 (Legenda)

Step 12. Now the pagination. And we use 'p.' or 'pp.' as appropriate. Number ranges are elided in the last two digits: thus '2234-2265' should be '2234-65', and '102-109' should be '102-09'.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 18 (Legenda), pp. 1–32

Step 13. This contribution has a DOI, so the Fourth Edition Guide (2024) requires us to quote it, like so.

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. ‘Introduction: “History Doesn’t Record Reality But Constructs It As the Object of Its Discourse”’, in Diestro-Dópido, Mar. 2021. Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 18 (Legenda), pp. 1–32, doi:10.2307/j.ctv1wsgqzv.5

And that's the finished bibliography entry. Note that there's no final full stop.

So how about citations in the main text, or in footnotes or endnotes?

The advantage of the author-date system is that these are very concise. In fact, you don't need a note at all. Suppose we quote from page 21:

The author reminds us of Shakespeare’s view: ‘Better a foolish wit than a witty fool’ (Diestro-Dópido 2021: 21).

And notes are concise too. There's no difference in how to treat the first and subsequent notes.

³⁴ Diestro-Dópido 2021.

So is author-date easier than regular MHRA style? Not always. Firstly, it may not be allowed by your editor, so check before using. But secondly, it makes books easier to write, but only at the cost of making them harder to proof-read. If you discover at the last moment that Blenkinsop 1996 was actually published in 1995, that can mean hundreds of corrections to make, and it gets worse if an author has many publications in the same year, because Blenkinsop 1996e and Blenkinsop 1996d are easy to confuse.