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Reference with MHRA

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MHRA is the required referencing style for students of English Literature, Creative Writing, and Drama, Theatre & Acting at Oxford Brookes University. This guide shows you how the MHRA style works and gives examples of many different types of sources you might use for your assignments - not just books, but articles, web resources and even works of art.

A shorter print guide Reference with MHRA (revised 2024) is also available to download as a word file or PDF.

On this page you can find the basics of how the MHRA referencing system works:

If you want to know how to reference a specific type of source click on the links below:

Glass jar containing coloured pencils
Student working with a book

How to reference books and book chapters

Print and eBooks, chapters and dictionary entries

Pile of books on a table

How to reference literary texts

Novels, poems and plays

Laptop and papers for acadmeic work

How to reference articles and web pages

Journal articles, newspaper articles and web sources

Student working whilst sitting underneath a row of painings

How to reference other sources

Films, TV, videos, podcasts, lectures, performances, art & more

Further help and guidance

Need help using MHRA? Contact your Librarian, Joanna Cooksey, email: jcooksey@brookes.ac.uk

This Library guide is based on the 4th edition (2024) of the official MHRA Style Guide published by the Modern Humanities Research Association:

Cite Them Right also includes a section on the MHRA style though this has not yet been updated to match the 4th edition.

1.1 MHRA basics: Creating footnotes and bibliographies

When writing essays or dissertations you need to acknowledge all of the sources you've used through referencing. These sources could be literary texts, books or book chapters, journal articles, web pages, even works of art.

Referencing in the MHRA style has 2 parts, footnotes and bibliographies:

Footnotes - this is a note placed at the foot of the page in Word which tells your reader which source you've used. Create a footnote when you are providing a direct quotation AND where you’re paraphrasing or summarising from the original text in your own words.

Bibliography - this is a list of all the sources you've used, placed at the end of your essay. 

Check each of your footnote sources is mentioned in your bibliography.

Your bibliography can also include additional sources that you've read during your research but not directly mentioned in your footnotes.

Make sure you credit every source you use.

In this section you can find out how to:

Student working with a laptop in the Library

How to create footnotes

To insert a footnote:

In Word, click on ‘References’ and ‘Insert Footnote’. Word will automatically assign it a number in superscript and create the corresponding footnote at the bottom of the page.

In Word for Mac, go to the ‘View’ menu and click ‘Print Layout’. In your document, click where you want to insert the note reference mark. Go to the ‘Insert’ menu and click ‘Footnote’.

Key things to remember:

  • In the footnote put the full reference to the source, following the format set out in this guide. Footnotes should run in one numbered sequence throughout your document.
  • Ensure that the footnote number in the text is placed at the end of a sentence, after the full stop.
  • If you have mentioned several sources close together in the text, you can use a single footnote to cover them, as in the example (right).

You can view more examples in this sample text with MHRA referencing in Cite Them Right.

Examples of footnotes

Schug analyses the narrative structure of Frankenstein.1

The environmental aspects of Mary Shelley’s novel have been explored by several critics, including Wood and Mayer.2

_______________________________

1 Charles Schug, ‘The Romantic Form of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein’, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 17.4 (1977), pp. 607-19, doi: 10.2307/450311.

2 Gillen D'Arcy Wood, ‘The Volcano That Spawned a Monster: Frankenstein and Climate Change’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 83.4 (2020), pp. 691-704.

Jed Mayer, ‘The Weird Ecologies of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein’, Science Fiction Studies, 45.2 (2018), pp. 229-243, doi:10.5621/sciefictstud.45.2.0229.

How to create a bibliography

A bibliography is a complete list of all the sources you’ve used; those you’ve cited in the text and additional ones you’ve read but not cited.

  • In a bibliography reference, reverse the order of the first author's name, for example:
    Austen, Jane
  • Note that if there are several authors, only the first author's name is reversed, for example:
    Wallis, Mick and Simon Shepherd
  • The bibliography should be arranged in one alphabetical sequence - by the first author's surname - and should appear at the end of your document.
  • If there is no author or editor, list the source by title, ignoring initial definite or indefinite articles.
  • References in your bibliography should not end with a full stop.
  • If the list includes more than one work by the same author, list them in alphabetical order of title, ignoring initial definite or indefinite articles. For each source after the first, substitute the author’s name with a long dash (Em Dash). For example:
    Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice, ed. by James Kinsley (Oxford University Press, 2004)
    _____, Sense and Sensibility, ed. by James Kinsley (Oxford University Press, 2004)

You can view more examples in this sample text with MHRA referencing in Cite Them Right.

How to deal with repeated references

You will often need to refer to the same source several times throughout an essay, especially when analysing literary texts. To avoid repeating the same footnote multiple times, there are two options; choose the one that best suits the specific context:

  • If you're discussing a literary text throughout your essay, follow the guidance below Subsequent mentions in the text
  • If you use the same source a few times (often a secondary source like a critical work or biography), follow the guidance below on Footnotes and 'short citations'

How to cite sources you've read about but not seen ('secondary referencing')

In some cases you will want to reference a work mentioned or quoted in another author's work. If you can, you should try to locate the original source to verify the details and then reference it as normal. However sometimes you won't be able to track down the original work and can only cite the source you have used. This is known as 'secondary referencing'.

For example, you have read a journal article by Eva Badowska which contains a quote from Susan Stewart's book Crimes of Writing: Problems in the Containment of Representation. You would like to use this quote in your essay but you have been unable to access Stewart’s original book.

In the footnote, you need to mention both sources:

  • the original source - the Stewart book
  • the source that you have read - Badowska's article.

Use the phrase 'quoted in' or 'cited in', depending on whether the author of the work you are reading is directly quoting or summarizing from the original.

In the bibliography you just list the source you have read, in this case the Badowska article.

Example of secondary referencing

Susan Stewart describes Walpole's Gothic Revival villa Strawberry Hill as 'a form of trompe-l'oeil, a triumph of surface over materiality and time'.3

____________________________________

3 Susan Stewart, quoted in Eva Badowska, ‘On the Track of Things: Sensation and Modernity in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 37.1 (2009), pp. 157-175 (p.163).

In the bibliography:

Badowska, Eva, ‘On the Track of Things: Sensation and Modernity in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 37.1 (2009), pp. 157-175

Presenting coursework for assessment

NB Check your module handbook and Moodle course for full instructions on how to present your written coursework for assessments.

Remember there are people who can help if you are unsure:

  • Contact your Librarian if you have any queries about referencing
  • Contact your tutors if you have questions about your module or assignments

1.2 MHRA basics: How to set out quotations

Find out how to deal with:

General advice on dealing with quotations

Direct quotation from any source must be indicated as such and the exact reference given within a footnote.

The MHRA Style Guide gives different guidance depending on the length of the quote you wish to use in your written work:

  • Short quotations are those of fewer than forty words of prose or two lines of verse. These can be integrated into your text and should be enclosed in single quotation marks.
  • Long quotations are defined as anything over forty words of prose or two lines of verse. These quotations should be separated from the rest of your text and should not be placed in quotation marks.
  • Multiple short quotations: If you wish to use multiple short quotations from the same text within a paragraph, you can choose to deal with them like a long quotation, separated from the rest of the text.
  • Omissions: If you wish to omit words or sentences, use an ellipsis - that is three dots in square brackets, like this [...].

For further help and examples, see the MHRA Style Guide, §2.12. Quotations (in Chapter 2 'Spelling and Punctuation')

Student checking a book whilst studying

Dealing with prose quotations

Short quotations are those of fewer than forty words of prose. These can be integrated into your text and should be enclosed in single quotation marks.

Longer quotations are defined as anything over forty words of prose. These quotations should be separated from the rest of your text and should not be placed in quotation marks. If you have omitted part of the text indicate this with an ellipsis - three dots in square brackets, like this [...].

The number for the note should appear at the end of the quotation, after the full stop, even if the quotation appears in the middle of the sentence. See the example of Lynch (right). For more examples see the MHRA Style Guide, §2.12. Quotations (in Chapter 2 'Spelling and Punctuation')

Longer prose quotations, including the first line, can be indented. See the example of Bewell (right).

Check the section How to reference literary texts for how to reference novels and short stories in your footnotes and bibliography.

Examples of prose quotations

Short quotation:

Lynch emphasizes that ‘In the culture about which Shakespeare wrote, hands were felt to have unique holy and sacramental powers’.4

Longer quotation:

This is how Bewell interprets John Clare’s view of language:

Ecolect is thus inseparably fused with idiolect in his poetry, and, in resisting John Taylor’s efforts to rid his poetry of dialect and provincialisms, Clare was struggling for the continuance not just of a nature but also of the unique language in which that nature had long been experienced and understood.5

_______________________________

4 Kathryn L. Lynch, ‘“What Hands Are Here?” The Hand as Generative Symbol in Macbeth’, The Review of English Studies, 39.153 (1988), pp. 29-38 (p.32).

5 Alan Bewell, ‘John Clare and the Ghosts of Natures Past’, Nineteenth-Century Literature, 65.4 (2011), pp. 548-78 (p. 570), doi:10.1525/ncl.2011.65.4.548.

Dealing with quotations from poems

Short quotations are those of no more than 2 lines of verse. You can integrate these into your essay text. Put them in single quotation marks and if your quoted verse includes a line division, this should be marked with a spaced upright stroke ( | ), for example:

‘I had seen birth and death | But had thought they were different’, muses Eliot’s Wise Man.

Long quotations are defined as anything over 2 lines of verse. These quotations should be separated from the rest of your essay text and should not be placed in quotation marks. If you wish to omit lines of verse, use an ellipsis - that is three dots in square brackets, like this [...] on a separate line.

You should follow the lineation and indentation of the original text as it appears on the page; see the example of Keats (right). Never centre lines of poetry.

Check the section How to reference literary texts for how to reference poems in your footnotes and bibliography.

Example of a long poetry quotation

Keats describes a desire to escape the pain of reality in ‘Ode to a Nightingale’:

O for a beaker full of the warm South,
 Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
  With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
   And purple-stained mouth;
 That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
  And with thee fade away into the forest dim -6

_______________________________

6 John Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, in The Complete Poems, ed. by John Barnard, 3rd edn (Penguin, 1988), pp. 346-48 (p. 346), ll. 15-20.

Dealing with quotations from plays

Short quotations are those of fewer than forty words of prose or two lines of verse. These may be run into the text of your essay, using single quotation marks.

Long quotations are defined as anything over forty words or two lines of verse. These quotations should be separated from the rest of your text and should not be placed in quotation marks.  If you wish to omit lines from the play you're quoting, use an ellipsis - that is three dots in square brackets, like this [...] on a separate line.

You should keep the original spelling and punctuation of the play you are quoting, and aim to reproduce the formatting of the text as it appears on the page. The speakers’ names should be positioned to the left of the text. See the example from Macbeth (right).

The number for the note should appear at the end of the quotation, after the full stop, even if the quotation appears in the middle of the sentence.

Check the section How to reference literary texts for how to reference poems in your footnotes and bibliography.

Example of a long play quotation

MACBETH          Prithee peace:
I dare do all that may become a man,
Who dares more is none.

LADY MACBETH       What beast was’t then
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man.

(Macbeth, I.7.46–51) 7

_______________________________

7 William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. by Nicholas Brooke (Oxford University Press, 1990), I.7.46-51.