How Can Students Use The MHRA Style Guide?
Depending on the college that you are studying in and the subject you are pursuing, you may encounter different reference guides. There are several style guides, but MHRA is mostly for humanities and arts. As a student, below is a guide on how you can use the MHRA style.
Footnotes
In MHRA, when referencing footnotes, there are several guidelines you have to stick by so that you can submit a perfect essay. You will need to fully reference a source if you are citing it for the first time. Other footnotes from the same source will have the author's last name, page numbers, and volume number. If there is no author, you will use a short version of the title, page number, and volume number if it is necessary. If you have several citations from the same source with multiple authors sharing the same last name or from the same author, the following footnotes should have the author's last name, a short source title, page numbers, and volume number.
Formatting Footnotes
When formatting the footnotes, there should be a full stop at the end unless you are ending the sentence with a square bracket. Abbreviations pp. should be used before you list multiple pages and p. when it is a single page. You will use brackets to enclose publication details. If the work you are citing is from individual publications, websites, or collections, their titles will appear in italics. Manuscript collections titles should be in plain form without any quotation marks. The authors' names should be in full and not inverted, and you can check some examples online to learn how to do it. If in a hurry or unsure how to format your work correctly, using the MHRA referencing generator can make your job easier. The checker tool is easy to use and gives you the correct format of your work. Any mistake you make can cost you marks. With such strict guidelines that the MHRA comes with, it is only safe to countercheck with the tool.
Bibliography
After writing your paper, there should be a bibliography showing every cited site in your work. The author's last names of all sources you have used should appear in the bibliography in alphabetical order, and if there is no author, you will use the source title. The bibliography and the footnotes differ a bit since you will have to invert the authors' names and have the last one come first. Do not include page numbers since you will be referencing an entire source rather than a specific page. At the end of the reference, you will not have a full stop.
Conclusion
Referencing is crucial when it comes to writing academic papers as it helps you avoid plagiarism. Failing to cite a source can cause you trouble with your instructors even if you had no prior intention of passing the work as yours. Therefore, it is good to understand the rules of the style guide you are using so that any work you quote will be correctly referenced.