MHRA referencing August 2024

There are several reasons that it is important to reference in your assignments accurately.

Referencing allows you to:

• Acknowledge the work of others,
• Demonstrate the reading you have done.
• Show the reader where to find the sources you have used.
• Avoid accusations of plagiarism.

The MHRA referencing style has been developed by the Modern Humanities Research Association. It is a set of rules on how to set out your references in your work.

It uses a footnote citation system. That means - in your writing a reference number is added in superscript after the information or at the end of the sentence. The reference numbers increase in sequence throughout the assignment or piece of work.

Full details of the source are given in a reference in a footnote at the bottom of the page it is cited on. This footnote should include page number(s) if you are quoting or referring to specific information.

The information to include in your footnote reference depends on the type of source (e.g. a book, journal article etc.)

Information about the resources you have mentioned in your text and footnotes are then also listed in a Bibliography at the end of your document.

This document will give you examples of various types of resources and show how to reference them as a footnote and in a Bibliography. (All examples are taken from English Studies and Creative Writing Guide to Referencing).

Quotations are word-for-word copies of text that you include in your work and they must always be copied with exact accuracy. This includes, for instance, precise transcription of the smallest details of both punctuation and typography (the use of italics, say, or capitalisation, etc.). Do not italicise quotations unless they appear in italics in the original.

Quotations should always be carefully identified as quotations.

Short quotations - that are no more than two lines of verse, or 40 words in length, use a brief phrase within your paragraph or sentence to introduce the quotation before including it inside single quotation marks ‘ ’.

For longer quotations (more than 40 words or two lines of verse), you should indent the quotation in full, so that it appears as an indented paragraph of its own, and no quotation marks are needed around the text.

A footnote should follow both forms of quotation.

If you wish to acknowledge the influence of a secondary work without making a direct quotation you can paraphrase. This means rephrasing into your own words. Sometimes this is much better than quoting all the time.

Paraphrasing has a number of benefits:

• Demonstrates to your lecturer that you understand the material.
• Allows you to summarise.
• Saves words.
• Improves the flow of your assignment.
• Allows you to reword the evidence so that it fits in with the case you’re making.
• Preferable to long quotations.

But Note:

• The meaning you convey has to be the same as the original author intended.
• You still need to reference it.

Secondary sources are critical works examining and commenting on the original primary sources such as a novel, play or poem. They can include books, journal articles, conference papers etc.

When quoting from a secondary source, give full details of the source and the page from which you are quoting in a footnote.

Referencing a book by a single author

For journals that are stored as part of a database (for instance, JSTOR) you do not need to provide a web link. Just use the details of the original print publication.

For journals which only exist online, you should provide a web link. If this link is not identified as a DOI (Digital Object Identifier - a stable web address) also indicate when you accessed the article.

• The footnote reference for the first quotation would be presented in full.
• Further quotations can then be presented in an abbreviated form.
• If the same work is cited directly after the original reference, you can use the Latin you can use the Latin abbreviation ‘ibid.’. This means ‘in the same place’, and you footnotes might look like the following:

You must give a bibliography at the end of your essay.

This bibliography lists all primary and secondary sources that you have referenced in your work.

The bibliography is divided into two parts:

• Primary sources - listing the novels, plays, poems, films etc. that you are analysing.
• Secondary sources - listing all the critical works.

Note: the presentation of references in a bibliography differs from the presentation of references in a footnote. The main difference is that the first author's surname is given first.

List your references in A-Z alphabetical order by surname [family name] of the first author. Subsequent authors and editors are given as forename, surname.

e.g. Williams, Edith, Jane Thompson and Claire Brown

Multiple works by the same author are listed in order of the first title word and after writing the authors name in full for the first one use a 2-em dash (that is a long dash - in Word go to the Insert tab select Symbol and them More Symbols. Select Special Characters and choose Em-dash and Insert.)

If there are up to 3 authors - give their names in your bibliography in the order that they are shown in the source. For 4 or more, give the the name of the first author, followed by 'and others'.

Where you have no author, list by title in the alphabetical order.

In titles - capitalise the first letter of the first word, all nouns, verbs and adjectives and articles (if they are the first word of a subtitle).

You may indent the second and subsequent lines of each reference in the Bibliography (but not in footnotes). To do this:

• Select the text in your Bibliography
• Go Home > Paragraph > Indents and Spacing
• Under Special, select Hanging
• You can adjust the depth of the indent using the By field.