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

Carpenter, Barry K., ‘Chemistry. Taking the High Road and Getting There before You’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 332.6035 (2011), pp. 1269–70

A journal article with 2 authors

Moiseff, Andrew, and Jonathan Copeland, ‘Firefly Synchrony: A Behavioral Strategy to Minimize Visual Clutter’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 329.5988 (2010), p. 181

A journal article with 3 authors

Lisiecki, Lorraine E., Maureen E. Raymo, and William B. Curry, ‘Atlantic Overturning Responses to Late Pleistocene Climate Forcings’, Nature, 456.7218 (2008), pp. 85–88

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Trauth, Martin H., Mark A. Maslin, Alan Deino, and Manfred R. Strecker, ‘Late Cenozoic Moisture History of East Africa’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 309.5743 (2005), pp. 2051–53

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Abulencia, J. Patrick, and Louis Theodore, Open-Ended Problems (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2015)

An edited book

Grady, Maura, The Shawshank Experience: Tracking the History of the World’s Favorite Movie, ed. by Tony Magistrale (Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016)

A chapter in an edited book

Ciaschini, Maurizio, Monica De Angelis, Andrea Monteriù, Rosita Pretaroli, Francesca Severini, and Claudio Socci, ‘Investments and Sustainability of Public Expenditure in the Health Sector’, in Ambient Assisted Living: Italian Forum 2014, ed. by Bruno Andò, Pietro Siciliano, Vincenzo Marletta, and Andrea Monteriù, Biosystems & Biorobotics (Springer International Publishing, 2015), pp. 35–46

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

Andrew, Elise, ‘California Moves to Ban Religious and Personal Vaccine Exemptions’, IFLScience (IFLScience, 2015)

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, NTSB Access-to-Aircraft Privileges (U.S. Government Printing Office, 29 December 1994)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Christiansen, Lisa M., ‘The Impact of High Quality Professional Development on Student Achievement in the State of Missouri’ (unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University, 2009)

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

Vecsey, George, ‘A Script, or Woods’s Road to Recovery?’, New York Times, 23 February 2010, p. B18

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