MHRA Style Citation Demonstration
Click cover to enlarge | According to the MHRA Style Guide, this item should be cited in a bibliography as follows: Diedrick, James, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’, in Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose, ed. by James Diedrick, Critical Texts, 70 (Cambridge: MHRA, 2021), pp. 237–74 This is how standard MHRA style would look. Some of its book series (notably Legenda) allow an alternative citation system called 'author-date', but please talk to your editor before using it. (To see the demonstration for author-date, 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'. Diedrick, James Step 2. This is regular MHRA style, so the name's followed by a comma. Diedrick, James, Step 3. Now we add the title, in single inverted commas. Any single quotation marks already in the title must be converted to doubles. Diedrick, James, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’ Step 4. We have to say where this comes from, so: Diedrick, James, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’, in Step 5. Next we identify where the article is to be found, using italics, not quotation marks, for the volume title. Diedrick, James, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’, in Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose Step 6. After the title come any editors or translators. It's 'ed. by', not 'ed by', because although 'ed.' abbreviates 'edited', we regard the 'd' as the second letter of 'edited', not the last: so the abbreviation doesn't contain the last letter, and thus must have a full stop '.' Diedrick, James, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’, in Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose, ed. by James Diedrick Step 7. 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. Diedrick, James, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’, in Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose, ed. by James Diedrick, Critical Texts, 70 Step 8. Since this is a book, not a journal issue, we have to identify its source, in round brackets. First, place of publication. This can be ambiguous. MHRA now has its registered address in Cambridge, so let's give that. Diedrick, James, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’, in Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose, ed. by James Diedrick, Critical Texts, 70 (Cambridge Step 9. Now a colon, a space, and the publisher's name. Abbreviating to 'MHRA' is fine here. Diedrick, James, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’, in Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose, ed. by James Diedrick, Critical Texts, 70 (Cambridge: MHRA Step 10. Then the year of first publication, and we're done with the bracketed part. Diedrick, James, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’, in Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose, ed. by James Diedrick, Critical Texts, 70 (Cambridge: MHRA, 2021) Step 11. Now the pagination. This is a book, so 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'. Diedrick, James, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’, in Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose, ed. by James Diedrick, Critical Texts, 70 (Cambridge: MHRA, 2021), pp. 237–74 And that's the finished bibliography entry. Note that there's no final full stop. So how about citations in footnotes or endnotes? In standard MHRA style, the first time the work is cited in a note, it should be cited in full. This looks very like a Bibliography entry, but:
Suppose we want to cite a passage on pages 24 to 27: 34 See James Diedrick, ‘6 Selected Prose and Critical Responses’, in Mathilde Blind: Selected Fin-de-Siècle Poetry and Prose, ed. by James Diedrick, Critical Texts, 70 (Cambridge: MHRA, 2021), pp. 237–74, pp. 24-27. But in any subsequent notes, a heavily abbreviated form is used: 37 Compare Diedrick, p. 17. |