MHRA Style Citation Demonstration
Click cover to enlarge | According to the MHRA Style Guide, this item should be cited in a bibliography as follows: Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Charlesworth, Michael, The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism, Studies In Comparative Literature, 36 (Legenda, 2018), pp. 33–56, doi:10.2307/j.ctv16km1k7.8 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'. Charlesworth, Michael Step 2. This is regular MHRA style, so the name's followed by a comma. Charlesworth, Michael, Step 3. Now we add the title, in single inverted commas. Any single quotation marks already in the title must be converted to doubles. Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’ Step 4. We have to say where this comes from, so: Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Notice: Object of class stdClass could not be converted to int in /home/grahammhra/mhra.org.uk/library/library.php on line 917 Step 5. Next, the author(s) of the book, which come before the title because this is a monograph. Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Charlesworth, Michael Step 6. Now a comma, not a full stop: Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Charlesworth, Michael, Step 7. Here we have the book's title, in italics, not quotation marks. Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Charlesworth, Michael, The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism 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. Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Charlesworth, Michael, The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism, Studies In Comparative Literature, 36 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. Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Charlesworth, Michael, The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism, Studies In Comparative Literature, 36 ( 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. Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Charlesworth, Michael, The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism, Studies In Comparative Literature, 36 (Legenda Step 11. Then the year of first publication, and we're done with the bracketed part. Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Charlesworth, Michael, The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism, Studies In Comparative Literature, 36 (Legenda, 2018) 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'. Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Charlesworth, Michael, The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism, Studies In Comparative Literature, 36 (Legenda, 2018), pp. 33–56 Step 13. This contribution has a DOI, so the Fourth Edition Guide (2024) requires us to quote it, like so. Charlesworth, Michael, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Charlesworth, Michael, The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism, Studies In Comparative Literature, 36 (Legenda, 2018), pp. 33–56, doi:10.2307/j.ctv16km1k7.8 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 Michael Charlesworth, ‘Chapter 2 Farrer in Old Ceylon, 1908’, in Michael Charlesworth, The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism, Studies In Comparative Literature, 36 (Legenda, 2018), pp. 33–56, doi:10.2307/j.ctv16km1k7.8, pp. 24-27. But in any subsequent notes, a heavily abbreviated form is used: 37 Compare Charlesworth, p. 17. |