MHRA Style Citation Demonstration
Click cover to enlarge | According to the MHRA Style Guide, this item should be cited in a bibliography as follows: Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Hartley, Julia Caterina, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy, Transcript, 12 (Legenda, 2019), pp. 69–102, doi:10.2307/j.ctv16kkxqd.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'. Hartley, Julia Caterina Step 2. This is regular MHRA style, so the name's followed by a comma. Hartley, Julia Caterina, Step 3. Now we add the title, in single inverted commas. Any single quotation marks already in the title must be converted to doubles. Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’ Step 4. We have to say where this comes from, so: Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Step 5. Next, the author(s) of the book, which come before the title because this is a monograph. Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Hartley, Julia Caterina Step 6. Now a comma, not a full stop: Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Hartley, Julia Caterina, Step 7. Here we have the book's title, in italics, not quotation marks. Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Hartley, Julia Caterina, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy 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. Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Hartley, Julia Caterina, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy, Transcript, 12 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. Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Hartley, Julia Caterina, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy, Transcript, 12 ( 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. Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Hartley, Julia Caterina, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy, Transcript, 12 (Legenda Step 11. Then the year of first publication, and we're done with the bracketed part. Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Hartley, Julia Caterina, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy, Transcript, 12 (Legenda, 2019) 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'. Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Hartley, Julia Caterina, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy, Transcript, 12 (Legenda, 2019), pp. 69–102 Step 13. This contribution has a DOI, so the Fourth Edition Guide (2024) requires us to quote it, like so. Hartley, Julia Caterina, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Hartley, Julia Caterina, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy, Transcript, 12 (Legenda, 2019), pp. 69–102, doi:10.2307/j.ctv16kkxqd.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 Julia Caterina Hartley, ‘Chapter 3 Guide Figures’, in Julia Caterina Hartley, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy, Transcript, 12 (Legenda, 2019), pp. 69–102, doi:10.2307/j.ctv16kkxqd.8, pp. 24-27. But in any subsequent notes, a heavily abbreviated form is used: 37 Compare Hartley, p. 17. |
