MHRA help and FAQs

If you need to refer to the same source several times, for example when you are discussing one or more literary works throughout your essay, there is no need to create a new footnote each time. For subsequent mentions you can use an abbreviated reference or ‘short citation’ in the text.

Footnote
The first time you refer to the work, create a footnote which includes the full reference as normal. You can also set out in this footnote details of the short citation you will use to refer to the work in future, for example: “Further references (to this work), are given after quotations/mentions in the text”.

Subsequent mentions in the text - short citations
The short citation should usually be the author's name or a short form of the title, plus the cited page number(s). For example:

McArthur, p. 62.

Macbeth, iii. 4. 99-107

If you are citing more than one work by the same author, for example if you are discussing two novels by the same author throughout your essay, use the author's surname and a short form of the title, plus the cited page number(s). For example:

Austen, Pride and Prejudice, p.23

Austen, Sense and Sensibility, p. 171

Harry Potter series

These books weren’t published as a series, so there is no overarching series title. To refer to the books collectively, provide a footnote the first time you mention one of the books in your text. In this footnote put the full reference details for each book individually (separate them with a semicolon), and at the end of the list write the following:

Further references to the Harry Potter books as a collection will be referred to as 'Harry Potter series (1997-2007)'.

You can then use this short form in further references to refer to the series as a whole.

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 and verify the details of the source referred to and then reference it as normal. In some cases it won’t be possible for you to consult the original source and in this case you would cite the source you have read – this is called ‘secondary referencing’. In the footnote 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.

For example, you have read an article by Eva Badowska in the journal Victorian Literature and Culture which contains a quote from a book called Crimes of Writing: Problems in the Containment of Representation by Susan Stewart. You would like to use this quote in your essay but you have been unable to access Stewart’s original book. In this case, you would cite the source you have read, i.e. Badowska's article, as follows:

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

Corresponding footnote:

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), 157-175 (p.163) http://www.jstor.org.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/stable/40347219> [accessed 13 January 2015].)

When writing an essay or a dissertation for English Literature, Creative Writing and Drama, you will usually need to provide a word count. Note that the allowed word length does not include abstract, footnotes/endnotes, bibliography and any appendices but it does include quotations used in the body of the text.
NB Different rules apply for PhD theses - check the guidance provided by the Graduate Office.

To calculate the word count without including the bibliography, highlight the relevant text to be counted.

• To check your word count in Word 2010, click on ‘Review’ and ‘Word count’. A dialog box will open allowing you to choose whether to include footnotes and endnotes.
• In Word for Mac 2011, click on ‘Tools’ and select ‘Word Count’. The default is to include text in footnotes and endnotes, so un-tick the option ‘Include footnotes and endnotes’ to change this.