The MHRA Style Guide
The MHRA Style Guide was first published in 2002, and was a successor to the MHRA Style Book, first published in 1971, with 'the stated aim of helping authors and editors of academic publications and those preparing theses "to achieve clarity and consistency in matters of style and presentation"'.[1] It was prepared by a small subcommittee comprising A. S. Maney and R. L. Smallwood, and has been revised five times since. It was the first style guide and footnote system defined by a British, rather than American, academic disciplinary institution. As such it is the product of – and evidence for – the professionalisation of humanities research in Britain in the late twentieth century. The MHRA itself was formed in Cambridge in 1918 by a group of scholars teaching modern languages. The Style Guide is 'a manual of English style for authors and editors based on British usage', and was always intended to be 'shorter and more manageable than its American counterpart'.[2] To this end, the MHRA Style Guide offers guidance for determining how to write citations, but does not attempt to legislate for each and every occasion. Using the MHRA Style Guide assumes that footnoters have understood the MHRA system, and can interpret and apply it in the disparate and complex citational situations thrown up by modern scholarship.
[1] MHRA Style Book: Notes for Authors and Editors, ed. by A.S. Maney and R. L. Smallwood ([Leeds?]: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1971), p. 1.
[2] David Wells, 'The Modern Humanities Research Association: A Brief History', MHRA <http://www.mhra.org.uk/About/history.html> [accessed 12 December 2006] (p. 6).
