Oct 2016/HT
REFERENCING GUIDELINES
MHRA is the preferred house style in the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures. There are however a number of different conventions (style guides) e.g. Harvard, MLA. These are also acceptable, but it is VITAL to follow the same style guide throughout. They MUST NOT be combined: consistency is paramount.
The examples below are from the MHRA style guide, recommended for use in assessments. Where you encounter other referencing systems in your reading, convert them into this system. For further help see the MHRA web site at <http://www.mhra.org.uk>.
Referencing Works in the Body of your Text
Titles of works (literature, criticism and essays) should be placed in italics (e.g. Don Quixote, Il giorno della civetta, Les Fleurs du mal).Individual poems, short stories or articles/chapters from collections are generally placed in single quotation marks (e.g. ‘Une Charogne’, ‘Le Pied de momie’, ‘Baudelaire: The Early Years’).
Short quotations (to a maximum of approximately two lines) should be incorporated into your text and single inverted commas should be used. Note that these must run on grammatically from the sentence that introduces them, whether in French/German/Spanish/Italian or English.
Longer Quotations (3+ lines) should be separated from the text and indented;single-spacing should be whereas the body of the text should be double-spaced. Inverted commas should NOT be used.
All quotations from a work of literature or a work of criticism should indicate their source. The first reference should consist of name of author, title of work, place and date of publication and page reference in a FOOTNOTE. An abbreviated form such as ‘Extension’ for Extension du domaine de la lutte (e.g. ‘Extension, p. 60) can be used for footnoted references to subsequent quotations. If you have only one work by an author you can put their surname and a page number in the footnote. EG Houllebecq, p. 60). Choose one or other of these abbreviations.
If you are quoting frequently from the same text you can abbreviate its title in the main body of your essay. In this case your first footnoted reference would state:
Simone de Beauvoir, Le Sang des autres (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 43. Henceforth ‘SA’. Your next reference in the body of the essay would be in the form of: ‘Enfin, bref’ (SA, 43). No footnote would be required.
Footnotes
Footnotes interrupt the reader so should be kept to a minimum and are usually used for documentation of sources quoted (where possible, additional expository material should be placed in appendices).
Footnotes should be numbered sequentially (as opposed to beginning the numbering afresh on each page). All footnotes end with a full stop.
Footnote references to books
First reference: Christine Delphy, L’Ennemi principal: Économie politique du patriarcat (Paris: Syllepse, 1998), p. 10. (or pp. 10-11).
Subsequent references: Delphy, p. 10 or L’ennemi, p. 10.
If you are citing two works by the same author, and have already quoted them in full, differentiate by a short title: Delphy, L’ennemi principal p. 10.
Books with more than one author
Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (New York and London: Routledge, 1992).
N.B. If more than one author – names in alphabetical order
Subsequent references: Felman and Laub, p. 12.
If the next footnote is to the same work: Ibid., p. 34.
Chapter in book (by same author)
Jacques Lacan, ‘L'Instance de la lettre dans l'inconscient ou la raison depuis Freud’, in Lacan, Ecrits I (Paris: Seuil, 1970), pp. 249-89.
Chapter in book when author different from editor(s)
John Marks, ‘L’Affaire Sokal’, French Cultural Debates, ed. by John Marks and Enda McCaffrey (Melbourne: Monash Romance Studies, 2001), pp. 80-93, p. 80.
Footnote references to articles in journals
Titles of articles should be placed in inverted commas and the name of the publication should be italicised:
Jane Smith, ‘The Modern Novel’, PMLA, LXV (May 1970), 20-22.
Citing two works by same authors and subsequent references as in Footnote reference to a book above.
Footnote references to online sources
Information should be given in the following order:
· Author’s name
· Title of item
· Title of complete work/resource
· Publication details (volume, date issue etc) as relevant
· Full address - URL or DOI <in angle brackets>
· Date at which resource was consulted [in square brackets]
· Location of passage cited (in parentheses)
Online articles
Steve Sohmer, ‘The Lunar Calendar of Shakespeare’s King Lear’, Early Modern Literary Studies, 5.2 (1999) <http://purl.oclc.org/emls/05-2/sohmlear.htm> [accessed 28 January 2008].
Online databases
Karen Bach, ‘Performatives’, in Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy <http://www.rep.routledge.com> [accessed 5 June 2008.]
Books downloaded onto e-readers such as Amazon Kindle
If you are citing from a book downloaded onto an e-reader, follow the same principles as if it were a printed volume but state which e-reader you are using.
However if you are using an older style Kindle where there are no page numbers you need to use the location numbers which do not change when the reader changes the text size. The location number can be found by moving the cursor to the relevant piece of text and the location number is displayed at the bottom of the screen. If you are using a newer-style Kindle book, there may be page numbers. For those where they are, they are displayed, along with the location number, at the bottom of the screen when the menu button is pressed.
Example from an old-style Kindle e-book:
D.A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), Amazon Kindle e-book (chapter 13, para.9, location 12411).
Example from a newer-style Kindle e-book:
D.A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), Amazon Kindle e-book, p.57.
Footnote references to films
References to films should include, as a minimum:
· Title
· Director
· Distributor
· Date
e.g. The Grapes of Wrath, dir. by John Ford (20th Century Fox, 1940).
References to films on DVD
Should follow the format for books above, but with the addition at the end of the phrase ‘[on DVD]’
e.g. John Ford dir., The Grapes of Wrath (20th Century Fox, 1940) [on DVD].
Filmography
· all film references require a Filmography, which should include original date of release, director, and (ideally) country/countries of production. Also, it must be made clear which format (VHS, DVD) and edition has been used for the study
Illustrations from film
· frame grabs can be used for illustrations (easy to obtain using DVD on a lap-top and pressing Print Screen). They should come with captions supplying film title, director, and actors involved.
· appendices can be created to supply basic essential information of a descriptive kind, like plot. Unlike footnotes/endnotes, appendices are not factored in the word-count
Footnote references to works already cited
If the next footnote is to the same work: Ibid., p. 35.
If a subsequent footnote refers to a work already cited, and where there is only one work by that author: Op. cit., p. 35.
N.B. Latin abbreviations used in footnotes should be italicized - Op. cit., Ibid.
Bibliography
N.B A BIBLIOGRAPHY MUST be placed at the end of each essay/dissertation;this should contain every work quoted/alluded to.
A bibliography is usually divided into primary and secondary
sources.
Primary sources (i.e. the set texts you are referring to, or the corpus of works you are working with), are normally arranged by date of publication.
Secondary sources are arranged alphabetically by the surname of the author or editor. If you have more than one work by the same author, these should be arranged in alphabetical order (see below).
Sample Bibliography
Primary Sources
Calvino, Italo, Il Barone rampante (Milan: Mondadori, 1990)
-----, I Nostri antenati (Milan: Mondadori, 1996)
Secondary Sources
Bach, Karen, ‘Performatives’, in Routledge Encylopedia of Philosophy <http://www.rep.routledge.com> [accessed 5 June 2008]
Jones, Paul, ‘Magical Realism’, Romance Studies, 25 (1970), 20-22
-----, ‘Yet More Magical Realism’ in Smith, John, (ed), Theory of the Novel (London: Faber, 1950), pp. 23-35
Smith, John, (ed), Theory of the Novel (London: Faber, 1990)
Note that whilst in a bibliography the author’s surname comes before their first name, bibliographic references otherwise follow the rules laid out above for footnotes, but do not end with a full stop.
e.g.
Books: Smith, John (ed), Theory of the Novel (London: Faber, 1990)
Articles: Jones, Paul, ‘Magical Realism’, Romance Studies, 25 (1970), 20-22
Chapters in books: Jones, Paul, ‘Magical Realism’ in Smith, John (ed), Theory of the Novel (London: Faber, 1950), pp. 23-35
Online resources: Bach, Karen, ‘Performatives’, in Routledge Encylopedia of Philosophy <http://www.rep.routledge.com> [accessed 5 June 2008]
Films: Ford, John, dir., The Grapes of Wrath (20th Century Fox, 1940) [on DVD]
5