Exercise 8: A Book (in French)
For texts in a foreign language, when deciding how to capitalise words in a title you should follow the conventions of that language. For titles in French, the MHRA Style Guide advises that it is normally only the initial letters of the first word and of proper nouns that are capitalized (although if the first word is a definite article, the following noun and any preceding adjectives also take an initial capital). (Section 6.4 of the MHRA Style Guide provides some – although not exhaustive – guidance on formatting titles of books written in major European languages.)Exercise
For this exercise, imagine you wanted to cite pages 9-10 of this book.
Type your answer in the box below (don't worry about indicating the accent over the 'e'). Tip: For this one, be sure to take care over the presentation of the title and of the publication details.
Correct footnote:
Your footnote above should look like this:Jean-Paul Sartre, *La Nausee* ([n.p.]: Gallimard, 1938), pp. 9-10.In your own work, the same footnote would look like this (and note this time we've retained the accent):
Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausée ([n.p.]: Gallimard, 1938), pp. 9-10.
Comment:
The quotation above states that where a French title begins with 'La', the first noun should be capitalised. So we give the title as La Nausée. We do not, however, expect you to be fully conversant with the capitalisation conventions of foreign languages, and when in doubt you should simply follow the capitalisation given on the titlepage. So it would be acceptable to cite this work as La nausée.
No place of publication is specified in the text, so we use [n.p.] to indicate this. Note there is no space between 'n.' and 'p.'.
If you researched Gallimard, you would discover they are based in Paris. Your footnote would then look like this:
Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausée ([Paris]: Gallimard, 1938), pp. 9-10.
