MHRA Style Citation Demonstration

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

Palao, Francisco Javier, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’, in Britain, Spain and the Treaty of Utrecht 1713-2013, ed. by Trevor J. Dadson and J. H. Elliott, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 8 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2014), pp. 18–38

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'.

Palao, Francisco Javier

Step 2. This is regular MHRA style, so the name's followed by a comma.

Palao, Francisco Javier,

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

Palao, Francisco Javier, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’

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

Palao, Francisco Javier, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’, in

Step 5. Next we identify where the article is to be found, using italics, not quotation marks, for the volume title.

Palao, Francisco Javier, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’, in Britain, Spain and the Treaty of Utrecht 1713-2013

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 '.'

Palao, Francisco Javier, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’, in Britain, Spain and the Treaty of Utrecht 1713-2013, ed. by Trevor J. Dadson and J. H. Elliott

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.

Palao, Francisco Javier, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’, in Britain, Spain and the Treaty of Utrecht 1713-2013, ed. by Trevor J. Dadson and J. H. Elliott, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 8

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. Legenda may be edited in Oxford, but the registered address of MHRA, which owns Legenda, is in Cambridge.

Palao, Francisco Javier, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’, in Britain, Spain and the Treaty of Utrecht 1713-2013, ed. by Trevor J. Dadson and J. H. Elliott, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 8 (Cambridge

Step 9. 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.

Palao, Francisco Javier, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’, in Britain, Spain and the Treaty of Utrecht 1713-2013, ed. by Trevor J. Dadson and J. H. Elliott, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 8 (Cambridge: Legenda

Step 10. Then the year of first publication, and we're done with the bracketed part.

Palao, Francisco Javier, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’, in Britain, Spain and the Treaty of Utrecht 1713-2013, ed. by Trevor J. Dadson and J. H. Elliott, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 8 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2014)

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'.

Palao, Francisco Javier, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’, in Britain, Spain and the Treaty of Utrecht 1713-2013, ed. by Trevor J. Dadson and J. H. Elliott, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 8 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2014), pp. 18–38

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:

  • The author's name doesn't always come first: only for monographs. For collections and editions, the title comes first.
  • Even if the author's name does come first, it's back to being the right way round, so it's Forename Surname, not Surname, Forename;
  • Unlike Bibliography entries, notes are punctuated as sentences, and usually end in full stops.

Suppose we want to cite a passage on pages 24 to 27:

34 See Francisco Javier Palao, ‘The Crown of Aragon in the War of the Spanish Succession and its Aftermath’, in Britain, Spain and the Treaty of Utrecht 1713-2013, ed. by Trevor J. Dadson and J. H. Elliott, Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures, 8 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2014), pp. 18–38, pp. 24-27.

But in any subsequent notes, a heavily abbreviated form is used:

37 Compare Palao, p. 17.