MHRA referencing is the house style of the Modern Humanities Research Association, and it is the system most commonly required for English literature, modern languages, and other humanities subjects at UK universities. It unsettles students for one main reason: instead of the bracketed in-text citations used by Harvard-style systems, MHRA places its references in footnotes at the bottom of the page, and the details of those footnotes follow conventions that feel fussy until you understand the logic behind them. This guide explains that logic, gives the full first-footnote format for the source types you will use most, and covers the shortened forms, ibid rules, and bibliography style that examiners actually check. The worked examples are illustrative, using plausible generic titles, so you can copy the pattern rather than the details.
One clarification matters before anything else. MHRA publishes two systems: the footnotes-and-bibliography style described here, and an author-date style closer to Harvard. They are not interchangeable within one piece of work, and departments that say “use MHRA” almost always mean the footnotes version. This guide covers that version throughout; if your department has specified author-date, or issued its own variation of MHRA, your department’s guidance wins.
How MHRA footnotes work
In MHRA footnotes style, you signal a reference by placing a superscript number in your text, immediately after the material it supports and after any punctuation. Your word processor then creates a numbered footnote at the foot of the page, and that footnote carries the full publication details the first time a source is cited. The footnote is treated as a sentence: it begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. Author names appear in the natural order — first name or initial, then surname — because the footnote reads as prose rather than as a list entry. Page numbers for the specific passage you are using are given at the end, introduced by “p.” for one page or “pp.” for a range.
Two habits distinguish a correct MHRA footnote from an approximate one. First, the place of publication and publisher are separated by a colon, and the year follows the publisher after a comma, all within parentheses. Second, titles of books and journals are italicised, while titles of chapters and articles sit inside single quotation marks. Getting those two patterns right — the parenthesis pattern and the italics-versus-quotation-marks pattern — carries you through almost every source type, because the individual formats below are variations on them. If you would rather not assemble each footnote by hand, our free MHRA Referencing Generator builds footnotes and bibliography entries in the correct format from the details you enter — but read on first, because understanding the pattern is what lets you spot when something has gone wrong.
First footnotes: the formats you will use most
A book by a single author is cited as: Author, Title of Book (Place of publication: Publisher, Year), p. 00. For illustration: Eleanor Vance, The Victorian City Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 112. Note the comma after the surname position in prose order, the italic title, and the pinpoint page at the end. For a book with two or three authors, name them all in the order given on the title page; for four or more, give the first author followed by “and others”.
An edited book is cited to its editor, with “ed. by” after the name: The Cambridge Companion to the Short Story, ed. by Margaret Hale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), p. 45. A chapter in an edited book is cited to the chapter’s author, with the chapter title in single quotation marks and the book’s details following the word “in”: David Mensah, ‘Memory and Place in the Regional Novel’, in Essays on Contemporary Fiction, ed. by Ruth Okafor (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 88–105 (p. 94). Notice the double page reference: the chapter’s full span in parentheses style, then the specific page you are referring to. A journal article follows a related pattern, with the journal title italicised and the volume and issue details replacing the publisher: Priya Shah, ‘Narrative Voice in the Modernist Short Story’, Journal of Literary Studies, 34.2 (2022), 201–19 (p. 207). Here “34.2” means volume 34, issue 2, and again the full article span precedes your pinpoint page.
A website is cited with its author where known, the page title in single quotation marks, the site name, and — essential in MHRA — the date you accessed it, because web content changes: Thomas Reed, ‘How the Cheap Press Changed Reading’, British Library: Articles (2021) <https://www.example.org/cheap-press> [accessed 14 March 2026]. If a site gives no author, begin with the title. These examples are illustrative patterns; substitute your real sources’ details in exactly the same positions.
Subsequent citations, short titles, and ibid
After a source’s first full footnote, later citations are shortened to the author’s surname, a short title, and the page: Vance, Victorian City Novel, p. 130. The short title is not improvised each time; choose a recognisable shortened form of the full title at the second citation and use it consistently thereafter. For an article or chapter, the short title sits in single quotation marks, matching its first citation: Shah, ‘Narrative Voice’, p. 210. Shortened citations are one of the features markers check most reliably, because students frequently either repeat the full footnote every time — which looks unscholarly and wastes words — or shorten so aggressively that the source cannot be identified.
“Ibid.” — short for ibidem, “in the same place” — is used when a footnote refers to exactly the same source as the footnote immediately before it, and nothing else intervenes. If the page is the same, the footnote is simply: Ibid. If the page differs: Ibid., p. 154. The moment a different source is cited in between, ibid. can no longer be used and you return to the shortened surname-and-title form. Two cautions follow. Ibid. refers to the single preceding footnote only, so it cannot stand for a source cited several notes earlier, and it should never be used in the bibliography. Students lose marks here by chaining ibid. across a paragraph in which other references have intervened; when in doubt, the short-title form is always safe.
Page-number shortening and other number conventions
MHRA shortens page ranges in a specific way that students often get wrong by copying the fully written-out ranges used in other styles. In general, give the second number in its shortest pronounceable form: pp. 112–18 (not 112–118), pp. 201–19, pp. 88–105. The main exceptions are numbers in the teens, where both digits of the second number are kept to avoid ambiguity — pp. 112–13 is, however, correct usage for thirteen, while a range such as 115–17 keeps the second number’s final two digits because dropping to one digit would misrepresent it — and ranges crossing a hundred boundary, where clarity wins. The practical rule is: shorten unless shortening would confuse, and apply whatever you do consistently. The same economy applies elsewhere in MHRA: use an en dash, not a hyphen, in ranges; write dates in the form 14 March 2026 without commas; and in your main text spell out numbers up to one hundred in words, a house convention that surprises students arriving from scientific subjects.
Quotations have their own conventions. Short quotations run within your text inside single quotation marks; longer quotations — conventionally those over about forty words — are displayed as indented block quotations without quotation marks, and your footnote number then follows the block. Any omission from a quotation is marked with an ellipsis, and any words you insert for grammar or clarity go in square brackets. These details matter in humanities marking because they are visible on every page, unlike a bibliography error that appears once.
The bibliography: form and ordering
The bibliography at the end of your work lists every source you have cited, alphabetically by author’s surname, in a different form from the footnotes. The key differences are these. The surname comes first, followed by a comma and then the first name or initial, because the list is ordered by surname and must be scannable: Vance, Eleanor, The Victorian City Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). There are no pinpoint page numbers, because the entry describes the whole work; for a chapter or article, however, you do give the item’s full page range within its parent publication, since that is part of identifying the work itself. Editors are listed with “ed. by” after the name, as in the footnotes. Entries are not numbered, and where you list several works by the same author, a long dash or repeated name follows your department’s preference, with works usually ordered by date.
Departments differ on whether the bibliography should be a single alphabetical list or divided into primary and secondary sources — a distinction English subjects frequently require, since the set texts under discussion are primary and the criticism is secondary. Check your handbook: submitting a single merged list where two sections were expected is a small error that is entirely avoidable. When you have many entries to format, the MHRA referencing generator will produce the surname-first bibliography form alongside the footnote form from the same details, which removes the most common inconsistency — an entry that is correct in one place and subtly wrong in the other. Students working on literature essays will also find the referencing expectations discussed alongside the writing guidance in our English literature assignment help pages, since in this subject referencing and argument are marked by the same reader.
Common mistakes to check before submitting
The errors that recur in MHRA work are consistent enough to check for systematically. The first is repeating full footnotes throughout: after the first citation of each source, every later reference should be in short form. The second is putting footnote numbers in the wrong place — they follow punctuation, so a citation belongs after the full stop or comma, not before it. The third is formatting bibliography entries as if they were footnotes, with the author’s name in natural order; the surname-first reversal is the bibliography’s defining feature. The fourth is omitting the access date for online sources, which MHRA requires because pages change. The fifth is inconsistent short titles, where the same work appears under two different shortenings and looks like two sources. Finally, check italics: book and journal titles italicised, chapter and article titles in single quotation marks, every time. A ten-minute pass through your footnotes looking only for these six things will catch most of what a marker would have flagged.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between MHRA footnotes and author-date? MHRA publishes both systems. In the footnotes-and-bibliography style covered here, references appear as numbered footnotes with full details at first citation. In author-date, a short bracketed reference appears in the text instead. They must not be mixed in one piece of work, and most humanities departments mean the footnotes version when they specify MHRA.
Do I repeat the full reference every time I cite a source? No. Give the full footnote at the first citation only. After that, use the shortened form — surname, short title, and page number — consistently for the rest of the work. Repeating full details throughout is one of the most common MHRA errors.
When can I use ibid.? Only when the footnote refers to exactly the same source as the immediately preceding footnote, with no other reference in between. Use “Ibid.” alone for the same page, or “Ibid., p. 00” for a different page. If anything else has been cited since, return to the short-title form.
How do I shorten page ranges in MHRA? Give the second number in its shortest clear form: pp. 112–18, pp. 201–19. Keep enough digits to avoid ambiguity, particularly around the teens and across hundred boundaries, and use an en dash rather than a hyphen. Apply one approach consistently throughout.
Does the bibliography include page numbers? Not pinpoint pages for whole works — the bibliography entry describes the work as a whole. But for a chapter in an edited book or a journal article, you do give that item’s full page range, because it identifies where the item appears within its parent publication.
Do websites need an access date? Yes. MHRA requires the date you accessed an online source, in square brackets at the end of the reference, because web content can change or disappear. Include the full URL in angle brackets as well, and cite an author where the page gives one.