An English with Media Studies Guide to

English and Writing Undergraduate Awards

References, Bibliographies

and

Quotations

The

Style Guide

The MHRA Referencing System

(for use on English and Writing undergraduate degrees)

Introduction – why reference at all?

On the English and Writing BA (Hons) awards, we currently use the MHRA (Modern

Humanities Research Association) referencing system. This can be downloaded in full at

www.mhra.org.uk and is called the MHRA Style Guide. There are also print copies of this

publication in the library, available both for short loan and for reference only. This

document is a highly edited version of that style guide.

You are advised to use this booklet (or the full MHRA Style Guide) rather than follow

examples of referencing in other students’ work. Learning to reference and footnote

correctly comes through practice and even though some of the best student work is

in the library in the dissertation section they may not have referenced or footnoted

their work as accurately as they might.

Failure to reference correctly and fully may result in charges of plagiarism, for

which the penalties include capped marks at assignment level, unit level, or degree

level. In extreme cases , the student may be forbidden from continuing

their studies. Plagiarism is usually documented on your academic record.

References are essential for identifying the sources of the material you refer to, either

directly or indirectly in your written work. They are also an academic requirement and in

order for your work to meet academic standards you must:

- include references to everything you have cited, whether directly or indirectly, in

your work

- write out those references according to the format given without deviating from that

format’s typeface, punctuation or spelling

- offer all the bibliographic information necessary for the tracing of the item by your

reader; this means, again, following the format precisely

- your work includes presentations; the same rules apply regarding references and

bibliographies

It is important for all readers of your essay or dissertation to be able to find any text you

have used. If you do not correctly identify your sources, you could be committing

‘plagiarism’, or intellectual theft, for which you will be heavily penalised.

There is also an easy to follow presentation on Good Academic Practice:

http://prezi.com/wghpynwkgus7/good-academic-practice/

If you are still unsure as to how to use this guide, the referencing system, or as to what

might constitute plagiarism, check with your tutor before handing in or presenting your

work. We don’t expect you to get it right absolutely in year 1, but we expect you to

endeavour to follow these conventions from the start, and by years 2 and 3, you will lose

marks for failure to do so. It is therefore a good idea to develop an intimate knowledge of

the conventions, and start good habits as soon as possible!!

There are several matters to consider concerning referencing:

- you need to know how give references within your work as you quote or refer in

paraphrase to another text

- you need to know what goes in the bibliography (listing all texts used at the end of

your work) and how to present it

- you need to know how to quote accurately, legibly and competently, and fluently in

your work

The following sections will explain all these matters as comprehensively as possible under

the following headings:

Section I: References and Referencing

What is a reference, where does it go, and what goes in it!

Section II: Bibliographies

Listing your sources at the end of your essay; this is quite a different beast to your

references, which are in your footnotes.

Section III: The Art of Quotation

EVERYONE READ THIS SECTION CLOSELY including 2

and 3

years. It tells you

how to quote properly, accurately and stylishly in your essays, and is IMPORTANT.

*** *** ***

Managing your references using RefWorks

RefWorks is software that allows you to collect, store and organise references from books,

journal articles, websites and other sources. It enables you to insert references in a variety

of formats (e.g. MHRA) into the body of your essay, dissertation or research paper and

automatically converts references into properly formatted bibliographies.

RefWorks is provided by the library and is free to all students at Falmouth University and

training sessions are provided on a regular basis – go to the RefWorks page on the library

website for further information.

*** *** ***

Examples for the sources most commonly used throughout your degree are included in

each section. For example:

• A book

• An article or essay in a book

• An article in a journal or newspaper

• A play

• A poem (short or long); and songs

• A short story

• An unpublished thesis

• Recordings (TV and radio), films,DVDs

• The internet

There is also a section on the ‘Author-Date’ system, an equally appropriate form of

referencing within MHRA guidelines. As you read academic journals and textbooks, you

will see a variety of practices concerning referencing. Different journals and different

disciplines use different styles. For example, the sciences, and the social sciences (which

sometimes include cultural/media studies type disciplines) often prefer the author-date

system, while humanities disciplines (which include literary studies) tend towards the

footnotes system. However, whichever system you use, you must be consistent and use

that specific system throughout any one piece of work.

Section I: References and Referencing

It is worth noting that references within a text necessarily interrupt the reading of that text.

The intention is to keep such interruptions to a minimum. To this end, footnotes rather than

endnotes are preferred on this degree. This means your reference goes at the foot of the

page on which you cite that text. It also means avoiding the over-anxious dotting of your

essay with footnotes. In the third section, we will explain how to quote usefully in more

detail, but essentially, you should only place footnote numbers at the very end of any one

sentence. More than one item can be referenced in a footnote – see section 10 of

MHRA Style Guide: Methods of Limiting Notes. Again, this keeps them to a minimum.

But first, what precisely, is a reference, and what goes into a footnote?

(To do footnotes in Microsoft Word: click on Tab References and follow the

instructions. It couldn’t be easier!)

What is a Reference?

Put simply, a reference contains the information needed to trace the item from which you

have quoted, and it goes in the footnote. Once you have given all of this information

(usually called the bibliographic information unless you are citing a film or media other

than published material), you don’t need to give it in full again in your footnotes. However,

you must give it in full in your bibliography. Just as there is a specified format for writing a

full reference, so is there a protocol for writing shorter references. See also MHRA Style

Guide, Section 11, for further information on this.

Referencing a book for the first time

This is the information that goes in the footnote. Footnotes are numbered. A small number

appears in your essay next to your quotation or citation, indicating that further information

is to be found in the relevant footnote. The footnote should contain ALL of the following

information, including the page number of the book where your quotation/citation is from,

in exactly this order:

• Author’s name, exactly as it appears on the title page of the book; first name

followed by surname, not reduced to initials. The names of up to three authors

should be given in full; in the case of four or more authors the name of the first

author should be given followed by ‘and others’.

• The title should be given as it appears on the title page, underlined or italicised.

A colon should separate the title and sub-title. The first letter of each principle

word should be capitalised.

• If the work has been translated or edited, the name of the editor or of the

translator should be given in the same way as the author accompanied by the

abbreviations ‘ed. by’, ‘trans. by’. If more than one editor is cited give the name

of the first editor followed by ‘and others’.

• If the edition used is other than the first this should be stated in the form ‘2

edn.’, ‘5

edn.’ or ‘rev. edn.’ for revised edition.

• If the work is more than one volume, the number of volumes should be given in

the form ‘2 vols’.

• Details of publication should follow in parentheses (brackets) with the place of

publication given first, separated by a colon from the publisher, followed by a

comma to separate this from the year of publication. If you are unsure for

whatever reason of any of the publication details this should be indicated in the

following form ‘[n.pub]’ for no publisher. If this information can be ascertained

from a source other than the book it should be enclosed in brackets, e.g. ‘[1987],

or ‘[Phaidon]’.

• If the text is part of a volume, the number should be given here in roman

numerals (it is not necessary to use the abbreviation vol.).

• Page numbers should be indicated by ‘p.’ for a single page or ‘pp.’ for multiple

pages.

Examples:

1. Petrine Archer-Straw, Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the

1920s (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), p.93.

2. Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters, ed. by Thomas H. Johnson, 2

edn (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 194-97.

3. Monique Wittig, The Lesbian Body, trans. by David Le Vay (Boston: Beacon Press,

1975), p. 21.

4. The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. by R. B. McKerow, 2

edn, rev. by F. P. Wilson,

5 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), III, 94-98 (pp. 95-96).

5. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2

edn. (Oxford:

Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 26.

Subsequent references for items already referenced in full

The MHRA Style Guide recommends that subsequent references should be as short but

as intelligible as possible. Ideally, this would include the author, volume if applicable, and

page number; on other occasions, the title is more useful, especially of collections. Section

11 of the MHRA Style Guide deals with this.

Example:

6. Rivkin and Ryan, p. 5.

7. Thomas Nashe, III, p. 96.

8. Wittig, p. 40

Referencing an article or essay from a book or anthology for the first time

This information should be given as follows

• Author’s name as above

• Title of article in single quotation marks

• The word ‘in’, preceded by a comma, followed by book title, editor’s name, and

publication details as above.

• First and last pages of the article, preceded by ‘pp.’

• Page number(s), in parentheses of the particular reference (p. or pp. as above)

Examples:

1. David Trotter, ‘The Modernist Novel’, in The Cambridge Companion to Modernism,

ed. by Michael Levenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) pp. 70-

99 (p.87).

2. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, ‘From Carnival to Transgression [1986]’ in The

Subcultures Reader, ed. by Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton (London: Routledge,

1997) pp. 293-301 (pp. 299-300).

The square brackets round [1986] in the second example means that the Stallybrass and

White piece was written or first published in 1986.

Subsequent references

Example:

1. Stallybrass and White, 1997, p. 294.

Referencing an article in a journal for the first time

(*see below for newspapers and magazines)

This information should be given as follows:

• Author’s name as it appears in the article

• Title of article, in single quotation marks

• Title of journal, italicised or underlined

• Volume number, in Arabic numerals

• Year of publication, in parentheses

• First and last page numbers of article. Note: not preceded by ‘pp.’.

• Page numbers(s), in parentheses, preceded by ‘p.’ or ‘pp.’ of the reference if

necessary

Examples:

1. J.D. Spikes, ‘The Jacobean History Play and the Myth of the Elect Nation’,

Renaissance Drama, 8 (1970), 117-49 (p. 123).

2. Victor Skretknowicz, ‘Devices and their Narrative Function in Sidney’s Arcadia’,

Emblematica, 1 (1986), 267-292 (p. 269).

If you are referencing articles found on JSTOR, or other online full-text databases,

please follow the convention above. DO NOT cut and paste in the URL. This is quite

useless to those marking your work, ignores the conventions, and is lazy– you will

lose marks for failing to follow good academic practice. You should however add in

square brackets, the online source and the date of access. See section below,

Referencing (Full-text) Articles on the Internet.

Subsequent references

Example:

1. Skretknowicz, p. 268.

Referencing poetry (and song titles)

Single or standard length poems can be treated as articles or essays in books. Longer

book-length poems such as The Prelude or Paradise Lost follow another convention. First,

the standard poem:

Example:

1. Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Standing Female Nude’ in Sixty Women Poets, ed. by Linda

France (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1993; rept. 1999) p. 113.

2. T. S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, in Selected Poems (London:

Faber and Faber, 1961; rept. 1975) pp. 11-16 (p. 12).

3. Bob Dylan, ‘Blowing Hot Air’, in Dylan’s Collected Lyrics (London: Boosey and

Hawkes, 2002) p. 3.*

Note that ‘rept. 1999’ means the original date of publication is 1993, and the text cited from

is a 1999 reprint. In all other respects, the text is the same, ie. an unrevised edition.

*Treat song titles as you would poems.

Subsequent references

As above.

Example:

1. Duffy, p. 113.

2. Eliot, p. 13.

3. Dylan, p. 3.

The longer poem

It is not always certain how long the longer poem is. Paradise Lost is clearly epic length,

but poems like The Waste Land are trickier since they are usually in collections. Nor is the

MHRA Style Guide much help in this respect. What you must include however, is the

‘book’ number, ie. the section from which you have quoted, if that is how the poem is

arranged. For example, Paradise Lost is organised into 12 or 13 ‘books’, and this

information goes after the publishing information. Particular editions of such works are

noted too. The chief difference is that instead of or as well as page numbers, you

give the line numbers.

Examples: [The dates in square brackets denote the date of the texts’ being written or first

published]

1. John Milton, Paradise Lost, [1666] ed. by C. S. Lewis (London: Faber and

Faber, 1945; rept. 1967), IV. 300.

2. T. S . Eliot, The Waste Land [1922] in The Norton Anthology of English

Literature, ed. by M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, 2

edn., 2 vols (New

York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2000), ‘Book I: Burial of the Dead’, pp. 2370-2372

(ll. 10-17).

Subsequent references:

Examples:

1. Paradise Lost, VII. 321.

2. The Waste Land, V. 16-17.

Referencing short stories

This is similar to referencing shorter poems, journal articles, or essays in collections.

Example:

A. L. Kennedy, ‘Spared’, in Indelible Acts (London: Vintage, 2003) pp. 1-24 (p, 4).

Subsequent references

Kennedy, p. 6.

Referencing plays

This is similar to referencing longer poems. The details of the location of your quotation, ie.

the act, scene and lines, correspond to page numbers of quotations from books.

Example:

1. Caryl Churchill, Top Girls, [1982] in The Methuen Book of Modern Drama, ed. by

Graham Whybrow (London: Methuen , 2001), pp. 5-100 (II. 2. 32).

Subsequent references

Example:

1. Top Girls, III.2.5.

Referencing an article in a newspaper or magazine

This information should be given as follows

• Author’s name

• Title of the article in single quotation marks

• Title of publication, italicised or underlined

• Date of publication, (day, month, year)

• Page number(s)

Examples:

1. Liz Norbury, ‘Pirate looks for female to cruise on QE2’, The West Briton, 10 May

2001, p. 3.

2. Douglas Wolk, ‘The Road to Kali’, The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music, June

1998, p. 31.

Referencing unpublished theses and dissertations

• Author’s name as above

• Title in single quotation marks

• The following information should be given in parenthesis: (unpublished’

followed by the degree level (where known), the university, and date.

• The page number.

Example:

1. Simon Poole, ‘Behind Barr’s: Unpicking the Masculine Narrative of Modernism’

(unpublished undergraduate dissertation, Falmouth College of Arts, 2000) p.23.

Subsequent references

Example:

1. Poole, p. 40.

Referencing Recordings, Films, Videos and Television Programmes

Referencing recordings of music or speech should incorporate the following information

(as appropriate) followed by full stops:

• Composer or author

• Title (italicised), artist,

• Orchestra,

• Conductor,

• CD reference (where available)

Examples:

1. Dylan Thomas. Under Milk Wood. Anthony Hopkins. Jonathan Pryce. 1992. CD

LPF 7667.

2. Sun City Girls. Dante’s Disneyland Inferno. 1996. ABDT CD8.

3. Siouxsie and the Banshees. A Kiss in the Dreamhouse. [1982]* 1995. Polydor.

*The date in square brackets is the original release date.

Films should be referenced at the minimum by title, director (using the abbreviation ‘Dir.’),

distributor and date. Actors’ and artists’ names, etc. can be added after that of the

director.

Examples:

1. The Grapes of Wrath. Dir. John Ford. 20

-Century Fox. 1940.

2. Bad Education (La Mala Educación). Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Pathé. 2004.

DVDs offer scene selection, a useful facility and a useful reference point. There is no

convention as far as we know about where to include such information, but it could go

after the film title:

Example:

1. Bad Education (La Mala Educación), Scene 5. ‘Alma Mater’. Dir. Pedro

Almodóvar. Pathé. 2004.

NB: This is a Spanish film and includes Spanish letters. You must always write non-

English names and words as they are written in their original language. If you do

not, you are misspelling the word and will be penalised. Thus: Brontë NOT Bronte.

Most software allows you to insert non-English letters and symbols: in Microsoft

Word, go to ‘Insert’ > ‘Symbol’ and click on the appropriate square.

Videos are increasingly unavailable but still in use, and should be referenced in the same

way, and if a video reference number is available it should be added at the end.

Example:

1. Fists of Fury. Dir. Lo Wei. Bruce Lee. Golden Harvest. 1972. 4front video.1997.

054 160 3

Television programmes follow the same convention. At the minimum, you should

reference the programme title, the channel, and the date of transmission.

Example:

1. Big Brother. Channel 4, 26 May 2001.

Referencing (Full-text) Articles on the Internet

The internet is a valuable source of information; however, the information regarding the

author or publisher of a website is not as easy to gather as that of other sources. Where

possible give the name of the author, the title of the article, the title of the publication, the

URL and the date the site was accessed.

• Author’s name, as it appears in the article

• Title of the article in single quotation marks

• Title of publication (if known) italicised

• The URL

• The date the site was accessed in square brackets

Examples:

2. Gersh Kuntzman, ‘Defiant Museum: The Show Goes On.’ New York Post

[on-line] available from http://www.nypost.com/news/14763/htm, [accessed

15 October 1999].

3. BBC News Service. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/page1.htm, [accessed 20

October 2000].

Referencing Other Online Sources/Databases

There are so many of these that you might need to ask for help, or use your discretion.

Whatever you do, DO NOT simply cut and paste in the address of the web page you have

used. These can take up nearly half a page, and are completely useless. You will be penalised

for this as it ignores the conventions, and is lazy, and quite beside the point of references,

which enable your reader to go to your source. As a rule of thumb, use the formula of title,

author, name of database/website, and the date you accessed it.

Author’s name

Title of text

Title of collection if necessary

Details of publication if necessary

Name of online source

URL

Date accessed by you

Example:

1. William Wordsworth, “We Are Seven” in Lyrical ballads, with other poems. In

two volumes. Vol. 1.Second edition. London, 1800. Eighteenth Century

Collections Online. <http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.falmouth.ac.uk>

[accessed 3 August 2009]

See Appendix for citing from a Kindle; see MHRA Style Guide for citing from

EBooks, etc. Section 11.2.13

The ‘Author-Date’ System

The MHRA referencing system allows for use of what is called the ‘author-date’ system.

This way of referencing requires full information of your references to be listed at the end

of your article or essay rather than in footnotes as you write. Parenthetical references in

the text give the surname of the author, the publication date, and, where necessary, a

page reference e.g. (Trotter 1999, p.71). If you use two books by the same author

published in the same year, use a lowercase letter to distinguish them e.g. (Trotter 1999a,

p.72), (Trotter 1999b, p.23) and so on. If you use the author’s name in your text it does

not need to be repeated in the reference e.g. ‘In Trotters discussion of the modernist

novel, he regards this as ‘wholly unacceptable’ (1999, p. 23). To make it easier for the

reader to relate your references to the bibliography at the end of your essay, the author’s

first name should be reduced to an initial, placed after the surname. The year of

publication should follow on from this. The rules for listing the title of the book or article

remain the same; the details of publication need not be included in parentheses, but if you

do, do so consistently.

Examples:

1. Trotter, D. 1999, ‘The Modernist Novel’, in The Cambridge Companion to

Modernism, ed. by Michael Levenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

2. Hebdige, D. 1979, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge)

Remember, you can only use one of these systems! The most important thing to

remember is to be consistent, if in any doubt at all consult your lecturers.

Section II: Bibliographies

When you have finished your paper you need to compile a bibliography; this consists of all

the books you have used and should be in alphabetical order by the author’s surname. In

the case of multiple authors or editors, only the first author or the first editor’s name should

be reversed in this way. Another difference is that you don’t include the page or line

numbers of quotations, only the page numbers of, for example, a poem, play, article/essay

when it is from a collection or journal. A bibliography containing the references used in this

guide would read as follows.

Archer-Straw, Petrine, Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s

(London: Thames & Hudson, 2000)

Bad Education (La Mala Educación), Scene 5. ‘Alma Mater’. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Pathé.

2004

BBC News Service. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/page1.htm 20 October 2000

Churchill, Caryl, Top Girls, [1982] in The Methuen Book of Modern Drama, ed. by Graham

Whybrow (London: Methuen, 2001), pp. 5-100

Fists of Fury. Dir. Lo Wei. Bruce Lee. Golden Harvest. 1972. 4front video.1997.054 160

Eliot, T. S., The Waste Land [1922] in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, ed. by

M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, 2

edn., 2 vols (New York: W.W. Norton and Co.,

2000), pp. 2370-2383

Hebdige, Dick, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979)

Kuntzman, Gersh, ‘Defiant Museum: The Show Goes On.’ New York Post [on-line]

available from http://www.bypost.com/news/14763/htm, [accessed 15 October 1999]

The MHRA Style Guide: A Handbook for Authors, Editors, and Writers of Theses (London;

Modern Humanities Research Association, 2002) http://www.mhra.org.uk [accessed 29

September 2005]

Milton, John, Paradise Lost, [1666] ed. by C. S. Lewis (London: Faber and Faber, 1945;

rept. 1967)

Norbury, Liz, ‘Pirate looks for female to cruise on QE2’, The West Briton, 10 May 2001, p.3

Poole, Simon, ‘Behind Barr’s: Unpicking the Masculine Narrative of Modernism’

(unpublished undergraduate dissertation, Falmouth College of Arts, 2000)

Skretkowicz, Victor, ‘Devices and their Narrative Function in Sidney’s Arcadia’,

Emblematica, 1 (1986), 267-92

Spikes, J.D., ‘The Jacobean History Play and the Myth of the Elect Nation’, Renaissance

Drama, 8 (1970), 117-49

Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White, ‘From Carnival to Transgression [1986]’ in The

Subcultures Reader, ed. By Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton (London: Routledge, 1997)

pp. 293-301

Sun City Girls, The. Dante’s Disneyland Inferno. 1996. ABDT CD8

The Grapes of Wrath. Dir. John Ford. 20

-Century Fox. 1940

Thomas, Dylan. Under Milk Wood. Anthony Hopkins. Jonathan Pryce. 1992. CD LPF

7667

Trotter, David, ‘The Modernist Novel’, in The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, ed. By

Michael Levenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) pp. 70-99*

Wolk, Douglas. ‘The Road to Kali’, The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music, June 1998

*If you had used more than one article from this book, you would not give each article

separately except in your footnotes. In your bibliography you would cite the book only, eg.

Levenson, Michael, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Modernism (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1999)

WARNING

Do not use bullet points or numbers in your bibliography. The

alphabetical order is enough.

Do not put full stops at the end of each item.

Section III: The Art of Quotation

So far this guide has told you how to reference material, but said very little about the

business of how to place your quoted material in your work itself. Quotations that are badly

used, poorly placed and inaccurately cited, are confusing, wretched and will be penalised.

Quotations must also be consistent with your own writing in terms of syntax, grammar

and punctuation, in order, primarily to make sense to your reader. It is also question of

good style. Understandably most undergraduates quote clumsily in their first few essays,

and we will offer help and guidance on this. But as your degree progresses, we will take

you increasingly to task if you don’t improve. Now that you are utterly terrified, let’s see

what this is about. The sections useful to you in the The MHRA Style Guide are Section 9:

‘Quotations and Quotation Marks’ and Section 10: ‘Footnotes and Endnotes’.

First citations of texts

The first citation, that is, its first mention in your essay, of a whole text, eg. play, long

poem, or novel, must note the date of its original publication in brackets. Thereafter you

don’t need to do this.

Example:

In this essay, I will discuss Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) and Oscar

Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1894-5). Heart of Darkness is a key

text in terms of cultural readings of colonialism and empire.

You will note how the titles here, because they are long or whole works, are in italics,

exactly the same as in your references. Citations of shorter works, eg. songs, poems,

articles/essays, or short stories would be cited thus in your essay:

Example:

Kennedy’s short story, ‘Spared’, was published prior to her novel Paradise (2006) in

her collection Indelible Acts (2002) but bears the Kennedy hallmark of in medias

res.: ‘Things could go wrong with one letter, he knew that now. Just one.’

First citings of authors, theorists, etc.

Always give names in full on first citing, unless that person is spectacularly famous, for

example, with Freud – even your dog has heard of him – the last name will do. If the

person in question is known less widely, the full name is essential initially, eg. Jonathan

Bate, but thereafter Bate.

Some don’ts and dos

DON’T…

A L Kennedy, ‘Spared’, in Indelible Acts (London: Vintage, 2003) pp. 1-24 (p. 3).

• Don’t write your quotations in italics or bold or any font/typeface that is different to

the rest of your essay unless the text you are citing does so; you quote your text

EXACTLY as it is written

• Don’t plonk your quotations in the middle of the page without explanation,

introduction or context (more on this below)

… but DO…

• Quote in full rather than in fragments, at first; as you become more confident you

can become more selective and use ellipses (see 4.8 in MHRA Style Guide and

section below: Do I have to quote in full every time?)

• Short quotations, ie. fewer than 40 words, do not require different line spacing but

run on within your paragraph/sentence; however, they must begin and end with a

SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

Example: In this article, Arthur Johnson notes that, ‘it is impossible to underestimate

the significance of Emma’s social status’.

Johnson’s argument however, is

dependent on Emma’s being hostage to her sense of herself as infallible, or as he

calls it, her idea of herself as the ‘super-subject’.

• Indent longer quotations: eg. quotations of more than 40 words should be indented

and distinguished from the rest of your essay by line spacing; long indented

quotations do not require quotation marks or a smaller or different font. Please do

not use any font size smaller than 12pt.

Example:

It is worth quoting Johnson at length as he works through Emma’s manipulations of

her companion and protégée, Harriet Smith:

Emma stands as a metonymic device in this novel, epitomising initially all

that is problematic with status when its authority is improperly and

irresponsibly wielded. Emma is the ‘bad’ aristocrat, careless of the feelings

and status of others, and in this respect, her development and her narrative

resemble that of Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. It is possible therefore, to see

how the hapless Harriet functions as the instrument of Emma’s epiphany

regarding her own poor judgement of others and her self. Harriet is, in the

end, nothing but a device too, towards Emma’s redemption, while both are

elements in Austen’s constant but considered anti-Jacobin position.

It is as if Johnson is angry with Austen, blaming her almost for de-humanising her

characters, which is ironic in terms of his critical stance.

Plonking

Introduce your quotations, and punctuate them within your work.

Example: As Jonathan Coulson argues, ‘there is only one way out of the tunnel’.

And your full reference for this quotation goes here, eg. Arthur Johnson, ‘Austen the Anti-Revolutionary and the

Belittling of the Super-Subject’, The Journal of English Studies, 6 (2001), 10-23 (p. 12).

Subsequent reference here: eg. Johnson, p. 14.

Johnson, pp. 14-15.

Full reference here… and the footnote number goes AFTER all the punctuation.

In this example, Jonathan Coulson is being quoted within the entire sentence. The end of

the sentence occurs AFTER the quotation, so the full-stop comes AFTER the single

quotation mark. This indicates that although the original text does not end after the word

‘this’, your use of that text does.

If the full-stop did occur after the word ‘tunnel’, your quotation would appear thus:

Example: Coulson is unequivocal about this: ‘there is no way out of the tunnel.’

But notice how, in each example, the reader is told who is being quoted, and very briefly

given a context for the quote. It is evident that these examples are part of a whole.

Quoting speech

Speech must retain or have its double quotation marks within any quotation since it needs

to be clear that it is speech.

Example:

‘He fumbled for a chair and lifted it close to her bed, all the while repeating quietly, “Shit,

shit, shit.” and rubbing the heel of his hand across his eyes. “Why the hell did you go back

there?” He sat. “Was it me?”’

Quoting poetry

The form and lineation of the poem must be observed and replicated in your quotation. In

shorter quotations, where you cite within your sentence, line breaks (signified by a forward

slash) and capitalisation must be quoted accurately. Verse or stanza breaks are denoted

by a double forward slash.

Example: The ballad is originally a folk or vernacular genre, often introducing its subject in

the first two lines as here: ‘The village of Lower Bogside/Was a wet and lonely place’.

Longer quotations follow the same indentation rules as prose, but obviously, preserving

the verse form and layout, no matter how eccentric it might seem to you!

Example:

The village of Lower Bogside

Was a wet and lonely place.

For the villagers all had died

Of a dreadful sorry fate.

— no, that is an awful rhyme, begin again

Of a dread…

………

And vanished without a trace !

—…… ok

Quoting plays

As does this footnote number.

A. L. Kennedy, Original Bliss (London: Vintage, 1998), p. 300.

Joanne Constant, ‘The Ballad Workshop’ in Go Frit (London: Boldaxe Books, 1998), p. 3

See 8.5 MHRA Style Guide for more information on this, but here are some guidelines. As

with poetry, and with prose, keep the lineation or layout, and treat the same in terms of

length of quotation.

Examples: 1

Orme Oh no?

Enter Kedger. As he does, Orme hides.

Kedger You seen a lad?

Martin What sort of lad?

Examples: 2

KRAPP: [Briskly.] Ah! [He bends over ledger, turns the pages, finds the entry he

wants, reads.] Box…three… spool… five. [He raises his head and stare front. With

relish.] Spool! [Pause.] Spooool!

This quotation follows the play exactly as it is printed. Notice, the stage directions are

included. Quoting Shakespeare can be a fraught business as he uses verse and prose to

denote status. Ask if you are in doubt, and, or consult section 8.5 MHRA Style Guide.

Do I have to quote in full every time?

It is advisable, especially at undergraduate level at least until your final year, but we do

acknowledge that it is not always necessary, and can eat up your word count. If you really

do feel that an entire paragraph or stanza is unnecessary, and you can still make your

point, you can use an ellipsis, which is […]. This indicates to your reader that you have

‘meddled’ with the original text; you can also use the square brackets to indicate that you

have changed the grammar or tense to fit in with your essay, or added an explanatory

name.

Examples:

2. ‘This indicates […] that you have ‘meddled’ with the original text’.

3. So ‘[t]his indicates to your reader that you have ‘meddled’ with the text’.

4. I wandered lonely as a cloud

[…]

When all at once I saw a crowd

In example 2, the capital letter is altered to be grammatically correct and in example 3, the

ellipsis denotes an entire line missing from the poem.

Where to put footnote numbers

Always at the end of the sentence. You can reference more than one item in a footnote.

However, stylistically, it is not advisable to overdo the discursive footnote. If material is

pertinent it should be in your essay. If it is marginal, junk it! The MHRA Style Guide

recommends that several quotations within one paragraph from the same text need only

be referenced at the end of the paragraph. This is because the intention is to keep

footnotes to a minimum and avoid repetition. But if you are unsure about how this would

work ASK. Again, at undergraduate level, there is greater stringency required, and your

efficiency may be mistaken for poor referencing.

Do I have to reference everything?

Yes… and no! There are times when you will discuss ideas and use terms that are

differently significant depending on the discourses and contexts within which you are using

them. It is advisable then to attribute such terms. This won’t mean much to first years as

yet, but second and third years will understand. Words such as ‘carnival’, ‘rhizome’ and

‘chronotope’ when used in literary and cultural theory, have a specific set of ideas and

discourses attached to them which should be attributed to specific thinkers or theorists.

This may seem odd, after all, carnivals, rhizomes and chronotopes existed before Mikhail

Bakhtin and Gilles Deleuze appropriated them, and they are in the dictionary for anyone to

use. The point is that Bakhtin and Deleuze et al, take such terms and build a concept out

of them that is quite separate from the word’s original use.

However, other terms are less appropriated, but highly favoured and discussed by certain

theorists, eg. ‘intersubjectivity’ is much written about by Hélène Cixous, but unless you are

specifically discussing Cixous’s reconfigurations of ‘intersubjectivity’, you don’t need to

attribute the term itself. Both the word and the overall concept have been accepted in

philosophical discourses for some time.

There will be other terms and concepts about which you may be unsure. For example, the

phrase ‘interpretive communities’ specifically originates with Stanley Fish and should be

attributed. The terms ‘lack’ and ‘absence’, in a psychoanalytic literary/cultural theoretical

essay might need attribution so that we know you know what you are talking about. But

‘lack’ and ‘absence’ are also publicly owned words and it will depend on the context in

which you are using them as to whether or not you should attribute them.

One rule of thumb in this respect is: if you weren’t born knowing it, reference it! But this

becomes unwieldy if taken too literally. We are born knowing nothing, but it is hardly

necessary to quote William Harvey every time we mention that blood is pumped round the

body by the heart, or Freud on every use of the word ‘unconscious’! Use your discretion,

and ask for help if you are unsure.

Direct and indirect quotations/paraphrasing

Most of this guide is concerned with direct quotations, but you will frequently refer to ideas,

concepts, theories and arguments made by other thinkers. You will also paraphrase some

writing and texts, ie. offer those ideas in your own words. You must still reference them.

Not to do so is plagiarism. And that is very serious!

The End – this guide does not cover everything. But if you are at all uncertain,

confused, or cannot see the information you need, please do ask us.

Appendix – citing from a Kindle

To cite an

ebook accessed

via an ebook

reader

In Text

Include author/ date:

(Smith 2008) or

Smith (2008) states that…

E-books often lack page numbers (though

PDF versions may have them). If page

numbers are not available on ebook readers,

use the chapters instead for indicating the

location of a quoted section:

List of References

Include:

• author name and initial

• year (date of Kindle Edition)

• title (in italics)

• the type of e-book version you

accessed (two examples are the Kindle

Edition version and the Adobe Digital

Editions version).

• accessed day month year (the date

you first accessed the ebook)

• the book’s DOI (digital object

idenitifer) or where you downloaded

the e-book from (if there is no DOI).

For example:

Smith, A 2008, The Wealth of Nations, Kindle

version, accessed 20 August 2010 from

Amazon.com.

Smith, A 2008, The Wealth of Nations, Adobe

Digital Editions version, accessed 20 August

2010, doi:10.1036/007142363X.

University of New South Wales

http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/ref_elec2.html

The following information has been drawn from the blog of J.R. Daniel Kirk and the APA Style Blog

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/09/how-do-i-cite-a-kindle.html

Most other citation styles have not yet provided examples of e-book reader citations.

In-text citation:

E-books often lack page numbers, although PDF versions may have them. Kindle books have location

numbers, which are static (don’t change with the font size), but can’t be read without a Kindle reader.

Options include:

• Paraphrase the information so a page number is not required

• Use Chapter, Section, Para to locate the section

• On Amazon.com locate the book and use the ‘search inside’ feature by typing in a portion of the

quotation

• If the line numbers are stable, these could also be used.

Examples:

(Gladwell, 2008)

(Gladwell, 2008, Chapter 1, Section 2, para. 5).

(Miller, 2009, lines 300-320)

Bibliography:

The citation for the bibliography should contain the type or model of the e-book being used (Amazon, Kindle,

Microsoft, Adobe Digital, Sony etc.) and the location number of the quote (page numbers are not shown).

Include the DOI if it is available.

Examples:

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Gladwell, M. (2006). Blink [Kindle iPad version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Brill, P. (2004). The winner’s way [Adobe Digital Editions version]. Doi:10.1036/007142363X

Macquarie University

http://libguides.mq.edu.au/content.php?pid=84334&sid=626460