How to format your references using the Modern Language Review citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Modern Language Review. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Clery, Daniel, ‘Six Handshakes, Then Silence’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 344.6187 (2014), 964–65

A journal article with 2 authors

Auer, S., and D. Frenkel, ‘Suppression of Crystal Nucleation in Polydisperse Colloids Due to Increase of the Surface Free Energy’, Nature, 413.6857 (2001), 711–13

A journal article with 3 authors

Bruins, Hendrik J., Johannes van der Plicht, and Amihai Mazar, ‘14C Dates from Tel Rehov: Iron-Age Chronology, Pharaohs, and Hebrew Kings’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 300.5617 (2003), 315–18

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Yin, Yuxin, Yu-Xin Liu, Yan J. Jin, Eric J. Hall, and J. Carl Barrett, ‘PAC1 Phosphatase Is a Transcription Target of P53 in Signalling Apoptosis and Growth Suppression’, Nature, 422.6931 (2003), 527–31

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Michaud, Thomas, Innovation, Between Science and Science Fiction (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2017)

An edited book

Itenberg, Ilia, Burglind Jöricke, and Mikael Passare, eds., Perspectives in Analysis, Geometry, and Topology: On the Occasion of the 60th Birthday of Oleg Viro, Progress in Mathematics (Boston, MA: Birkhäuser, 2012), ccxcvi

A chapter in an edited book

Mikolajczak, Celina, Michael Kahn, Kevin White, and Richard Thomas Long, ‘Lithium-Ion Battery Failures’, in Lithium-Ion Batteries Hazard and Use Assessment, ed. by Michael Kahn, Kevin White, and Richard Thomas Long, SpringerBriefs in Fire (Boston, MA: Springer US, 2011), pp. 43–70

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Modern Language Review.

Blog post

Hale, Tom, ‘Subway’s “Chicken” Contains Just 50 Percent Chicken DNA, Says Investigation’, IFLScience (IFLScience, 2017)

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office, Federal Aviation Administration’s Advanced Automation System Investment (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 31 March 1988)

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Farrell, Dale Patrick, ‘Teachers’ Perceptions of How the Use of Peer Evaluation Could Improve Their Teaching Practice’ (unpublished Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 2017)

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Florio, John, and Ouisie Shapiro, ‘The Future of Racing Plugs Into Red Hook’, New York Times, 13 July 2017, p. MB1

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal title	Modern Language Review
ISSN (print)	0026-7937
ISSN (online)	2222-4319
Scope	Language and Linguistics Literature and Literary Theory Linguistics and Language