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.
I used to be able to input the format eg '3 and 4 Vict. c. 85' into code number, and it would show correctly in my footnotes.
Now for some reason, it sends it to my footnotes as '111 and 4 Vict. c.85). (ie digit 3 has been changed into Roman numerals). I could live with both the 3 and the 4 being changed to Roman, but this mix is bizarre and very annoying.
As there are no examples of legal sources in MHRA, the style hasn't been tested at all with legal types. One option might be to use OSCOLA style for legal types in MHRA, similar to the embedding of Bluebook in APA and Chicago.
While citing films I'm getting the distributor in place of the location. I've tried replicating the test items without much success.
In the extra field I've put 'event-place:' as you have in the sample, but also tried 'Event Place:' as suggested here: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/item_types_and_fields#citing_fields_from_extra.
Both of these approaches return
The Grapes of Wrath, dir. by John Ford (Twentieth Century Fox, 1940).
Rather than the MHRA sample:
The Grapes of Wrath, dir. by John Ford (USA, 1940).
Is there something I'm doing wrong here?
In using the new MHRA implementations, I've encountered a couple of things that are a little puzzling. I am pretty sure that this reflects my inexperience with MHRA and ignorance of the inner workings of Zotero and CSL, and I'm reluctant to add to your work with a lot of "newbie" questions, but maybe I can note these puzzles here and someone can just point me to an explanation?
1. Small puzzle: In the Journal article type, if I include page numbers and a DOI, the page numbers and the DOI are output. But if I include page numbers, no DOI but a URL, I can't get the URL to be output. There's a workaround (hide the page numbers somewhere else) but this seems a bit clumsy. Is there a better way?
2. More complicated puzzle: Item types Encyclopedia article and Dictionary entry. Apologies for the lengthy (and possibly confused) explanation that follows. If you can point me to something I can read to unconfuse myself, I'm happy to do some homework. And once again, thanks.
Encyclopedias and Dictionaries in MHRA style
I'm using Zotero to add citations to a document using the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) style, fourth Edition, 2024. There are 5 versions of this Citation Style: all seem to be quite recent, dated 2 August 2025. I'm using the fifth style in the list, "(notes)"
The MHRA guide advises that citations of dictionaries and encyclopedias be done in a different way to citations of web pages, like this
Entry ‘locator’, Encyclopædia Britannica, n.d. [accessed 18 February 2025].
I can follow this advice and create items of type Encyclopedia Article or Dictionary Entry in Zotero.
Citing these items produces footnote citations in the form advised in the MHRA style guide.
But when I create a bibliography, these encyclopedia and dictionary references are not listed.
This surprised me, but on reflection I can see why you might not want to create an entry in a bibliography for a reference to a dictionary.
But if in Zotero I right click on one of these item types, and "create bibliography from item" then I get the following (output mode is "Bibliography")
1. Entry ‘locator’, Encyclopædia Britannica, n.d. [accessed 18 February 2025].
This seems inconsistent because when I actually try to create a bibliography including this item, the item won't be listed in the bibliography.
So two questions:
1. Omitting the item from the bibliography could well be a reasonable decision, though I can't find this mentioned in the MHRA guide. It might also be unintended. Is there any way of telling?
2. The right click option in Zotero seems inconsistent with how bibliographies are created using this style. If the item is not going to show up in the bibliography, shouldn't there just be a warning message to that effect?
It is standard in more detailed style guides to specify that certain types of citations should not have a corresponding entry in a bibliography, such as personal communications not accessible in an edition or archive, or unpublished manuscripts of forthcoming works. MHRA give absolutely no guidance in this area, but since citations of unsigned reference entries in notes always begin with the word 'entry', this format cannot be alphabetized within a bibliography. I have therefore assumed that their intent is to omit unsigned reference entries from the bibliography. In this, I have used guidance from the Oxford Style Manual, which MHRA follow in many areas (one must also refer to this book for their approach to author–date); drawing also on the Chicago Manual of Style, which is especially specific about which items should be omitted from the bibliography.