Upgrade StorageNew implementation of the MHRA Style Guide, 4th edition
I am very happy to announce a rewrite of the Citation Style Language (CSL) implementation of the Modern Humanities Research Association styles, now available on the Zotero Style Repository. These styles now fully support every type of reference in the 4th edition of the MHRA Style Guide, providing consistent results across its notes and author–date systems.
The new styles are based on my new Chicago Manual of Style implementation. Enhancements include full support for multivolume works, special issues, classical works, online sources, and correspondence. Since MHRA is a simpler guide, I have occasionally drawn on New Hart’s Rules and Chicago to fill in the gaps.
For additional details, see the notes on changes by section available via GitHub.
These styles support the full CSL specification. Although Zotero does not yet expose all CSL variables as fields in its interface, this ensures that as new fields are added, the MHRA styles will be able to take full advantage of them. For now, you can enter any CSL variable manually via the Extra field.
The new styles are based on my new Chicago Manual of Style implementation. Enhancements include full support for multivolume works, special issues, classical works, online sources, and correspondence. Since MHRA is a simpler guide, I have occasionally drawn on New Hart’s Rules and Chicago to fill in the gaps.
For additional details, see the notes on changes by section available via GitHub.
Working with the new styles
If you see a type of citation in the MHRA Style Guide that you wish to reproduce, search for it in the Zotero Test Items Library, where I have encoded each official example. For instance, you might wish to see how to include original publication details, as in the Homeri Ilias model in §7.3a, example ix. Search for 7.3a.ix in the library to see where to provide the relevant details in Zotero.These styles support the full CSL specification. Although Zotero does not yet expose all CSL variables as fields in its interface, this ensures that as new fields are added, the MHRA styles will be able to take full advantage of them. For now, you can enter any CSL variable manually via the Extra field.
Supporting CSL development
CSL is a volunteer-run, open-source project separate from Zotero. If the MHRA styles support your work, you might consider:- joining the MHRA (free for postgraduate students): it is their membership model that enables the innovative open licensing of their Style Guide;
- sponsoring the CSL styles repository on GitHub;
- giving to the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, without which none of my work would be possible;
- taking out a Zotero storage subscription, which sustains the development of the reference manager we all love.
I am using Pandoc citeproc to generate my citations along with this CSL file. When I have more than one citation in a footnote, i.e.
[@ft1]; [@ft2]
the second and subsequent entries are enclosed in parentheses. Is this something that the CSL is controlling or is it deeper in citeproc perhaps?
Note that the format [@ft1; @ft2] doesn't have this behaviour but is hard to structure in a complex footnote.
Sorry for the obscure question!
"When you are using a note style, it is usually better to let citeproc create the footnotes from citations rather than writing an explicit note. If you do write an explicit note that contains a citation, note that normal citations will be put in parentheses, while author-in-text citations will not. For this reason, it is sometimes preferable to use the author-in-text style inside notes when using a note style."
Pretty much the only situation in which you will need to create a manual footnote is if it's multi-paragraph or includes a block quote, in which case you can simply enclose the locator in brackets:
Some text.[^1}
[^1]: @test [p. 12]:
> Quoted text.