MHRA Referencing 4th Edition: Footnotes and Bibliography

Studying arts or humanities at a UK university? You'll likely need to cite MHRA style. MHRA style has been used well beyond the Association's own publications since 1971, and it's a common requirement for literature, languages, and cultural studies across Britain and beyond. This guide covers all major components of citing MHRA, common mistakes, and FAQs.

Every example on this page is taken from the MHRA Style Guide Online, Fourth Edition (2024), which the Association publishes free and under a CC BY-NC licence. Section numbers are given so you can check each one against the source.

What Is MHRA Style?

MHRA is a footnote-based citation system set out in the MHRA Style Guide, 4th edition (2024), which superseded the 3rd edition (2013) in February 2024. The full guide is free online and also available as a PDF and a paperback. While MHRA style is most strongly associated with footnotes and a bibliography, the guide presents footnote citation and author–date citation "on an equal footing" (§7.1).

What changed in the 4th edition

The guide's own list of changes names four:

1. "pp." is now used for journal page ranges — previously MHRA required "pp." for book chapters but omitted it for articles.
2. The part number is always given, even for through-paginated journals (115.4, not 115).
3. DOIs are required in journal references.
4. The place of publication is omitted from book references, except where it is genuinely useful (early printing, or print cultures where publisher names are uncertain).

That fourth change matters most, because older guides and most citation generators still produce "(London: Routledge, 2017)". In 4th-edition MHRA that is "(Routledge, 2017)".

Footnotes

MHRA uses superscript numbers in the text with corresponding footnotes. Per §2.16(a), a note number goes at the end of a sentence where possible, and follows any punctuation except a dash, which it precedes.

In text:

First footnote (full reference, §7.3(a) example i):

Subsequent footnote (short form, §7.12):

For subsequent citations, §7.12 asks for "the shortest unambiguous form": normally the author's surname plus a shortened title (drop the subtitle), volume number if relevant, and the page reference.

Bibliography Format

Bibliographies list all sources alphabetically by author surname. Use hanging indents. Per §8.3 the information matches the footnote exactly except that the first author's name is inverted — and there is no full stop at the end of a bibliography entry.

Books

Bibliography entry (§8.3):

Note: publisher and date go inside parentheses, separated by a comma. The place of publication is not given (§7.3(a), item 7). Where a book is published jointly, name both publishers.

Multiple authors — a chapter, as §8.3 lists it in a bibliography:

The footnote form of the same chapter (§7.3(b), example iii) gives the forenames first and adds the pages actually used: Ani Kokobobo and Devin McFadden, 'The Queer Nihilist: …' (Academic Studies Press, 2021), pp. 132–52 (pp. 146–47), doi:10.2307/j.ctv249sgs4.13.

Only the first author's name is inverted. For more than three authors or editors, give the first followed by 'and others' — §7.3(a) is explicit that MHRA does not use 'et al.'

Edited volume (§8.3):

In a footnote the same book appears title-first, because for an edited collection the title comes before the editors (§7.3(a), example v): Motherhood in Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe, ed. by Gill Rye and others (Routledge, 2017).

Journal Articles

The 4th edition requires a DOI, "pp." and the part number. MHRA's own first-reference (footnote) example, §7.4 example iv:

In a bibliography the first author's name is inverted, the pages you used are dropped and there is no final full stop — as in this §8.3 entry:

That entry is reproduced exactly as MHRA prints it, including one slip worth seeing: the Crossref record for that DOI gives the article's title as "Tolstoy's Enigmatic Final Hero: Holy War, Sufism, and the Spiritual Path in Hadji Murat". Copy titles from the article, not from an example — including examples in official style guides.

Format: Author, 'Title', Journal, Volume.Part (Year), pp. Pages, doi:…

Note the volume and part format — 50.2, not Vol. 50, No. 2 — and that §6.2 requires the lower-case form doi: followed immediately by the identifier, with no access date and no angle brackets. Do not rewrite a DOI as a https://doi.org/… URL, and do not name the database you used (§7.4).

Book Chapters

MHRA's own footnote example, §7.3(b) example i:

Use 'in' before the book title and 'ed. by' (not 'edited by' or 'eds.'). In a footnote, give the full page span of the chapter, then the specific page(s) in parentheses; the bibliography entry inverts the first name and keeps only the span (see the Kokobobo and McFadden entry above).

Websites

Per §7.5 and §6.3, the URL goes in angle brackets and the access date in square brackets (§7.5, example i):

Watch the typography in that example. Per §7.5 item 3, names of services and platforms (YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok) are set in roman, and names of websites "are generally given in roman (e.g. British Museum, Deutscher Bundestag) but may be given in italics if the website is the equivalent of a print publication" — which is why British Vogue is italic here. If the page is undated, give 'n.d.' (§7.5, item 4). An access date is always required with a URL (§6.3).

Citing Literary Texts

When you quote one key text throughout, §7.3(a) item 11 lets you establish a short form in an initial footnote and then use parenthetical references.

First mention (footnote, §7.3(a) example xv):

Subsequent references (in text):

This avoids cluttering your essay with repetitive footnotes for the same work. Volume numbers in a multi-volume work are given in small capital roman numerals (§7.3(a), item 8).

Quotations

Per §2.12(a), a prose quotation of no more than forty words (or a verse quotation of no more than two lines) is a short quotation; anything longer is a long quotation.

• Short quotations (§2.13): single quotation marks, run on with your text. A line division in verse is marked with a spaced upright stroke, '|'.
• Long quotations (§2.14): a separate paragraph, left-indented, blank line above and below, no quotation marks.
• Quotations within quotations (§2.13): double quotation marks inside single ones.
• Omissions (§2.12(d)): an ellipsis inside square brackets — [...] — so it can be told apart from points in the original.

Key MHRA Conventions

• Single quotation marks. MHRA uses 'single quotes' for titles and quotations, with "double quotes" for quotes within quotes (§2.13).
• Edition abbreviations. Write "2nd edn", "rev. edn" — not "2nd ed." or "second edition" — and not in superscript (§7.3(a), item 5).
• "ed. by" not "edited by." Similarly, "trans. by" for translations (§7.3(a), item 3).
• No place of publication. Since the 4th edition, book references give publisher and year only.
• "pp." for page ranges. Used in footnotes and bibliography entries, for chapters and journal articles alike. Bibliography entries simply take no final full stop (§8.3).
• 'and others', not 'et al.' For more than three authors or editors (§7.3(a), item 1).
• Possessives. Names ending in a pronounced -s or -z take apostrophe-s: "Dickens's characters", "Cervantes's works" (§4.4). The exceptions are Moses and Greek names ending in -es, which take the apostrophe alone.

Short Citations

After the first full citation, use the shortest unambiguous form (§7.12):

'Ibid.' is permitted but §7.12 says it "should be used very sparingly and limited to those situations where there is no possibility of confusion, such as after a second reference which is separated from its predecessor by no more than four lines of typescript":

Do not write 'Jones, ibid., pp. 45–71', and do not use 'loc. cit.' or 'op. cit.', which §7.12 rejects as too vague.

MHRA vs Chicago

Who Uses MHRA?

MHRA style is used for modern languages, literature, and cultural studies, and the Association notes that "today many universities require dissertations to follow it." It is the style of MHRA's own publications, which include Modern Language Review (published since 1905) and the book series Visual Culture (since 2021). Always check your department's own guidance, which may vary in detail.

Sources Checked

• Modern Humanities Research Association, The MHRA Style Guide Online: A Handbook for Authors and Editors, 4th edn (2024) — contents, Changes to MHRA Style, Chapter 2, Chapter 4, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8.
• DOIs in the examples above were confirmed against Crossref (api.crossref.org/works/10.1086/722938, 10.2307/j.ctv249sgs4.13, 10.1111/russ.12118 — the last of which shows a word missing from MHRA's own printed title).