diff --git a/esvsearch.d b/esvsearch.d
index f65990e..c070a9b 100644
--- a/esvsearch.d
+++ b/esvsearch.d
@@ -24,7 +24,9 @@ import std.file    : FileException;
 import std.getopt  : getopt, GetOptException;
 import std.path    : baseName, expandTilde;
 import std.process : environment;
+import std.regex   : regex, matchAll, replaceFirst;
 import std.stdio   : writeln, writefln;
+import std.string  : tr;
 
 import esvapi;
 import initial;
@@ -36,8 +38,28 @@ import cf = config;
 
 string cFlag; /* config path */
 bool   eFlag; /* exact matches */
+bool   mFlag; /* machine readable */
 bool   VFlag; /* show version */
 
+string
+machineReadableFmt(string reference, string content)
+{
+	/* match the start of the reference against bibleBooks
+	 * to identify what book it's from, so we can replace
+	 * spaces in the book name with underscores :-) */
+	foreach (string book; bibleBooks) {
+		auto match = reference.matchAll(regex("^(" ~ book ~ ") \\d"));
+		if (!match.empty) {
+			assert(match.captures[1] == book
+				&& bookValid(match.captures[1]));
+			reference = reference.replaceFirst(
+				regex('^' ~ book), book.tr(" ", "_"));
+		}
+	}
+
+	return reference ~ " / " ~ content ~ "\n";
+}
+
 int
 main(string[] args)
 {
@@ -59,6 +81,7 @@ main(string[] args)
 			config.caseSensitive,
 			"c", &cFlag,
 			"e", &eFlag,
+			"m", &mFlag,
 			"V", &VFlag,
 		);
 	} catch (GetOptException e) {
@@ -71,7 +94,7 @@ main(string[] args)
 	}
 
 	if (args.length < 2) {
-		stderr.writefln("usage: %s [-eV] [-c config] query",
+		stderr.writefln("usage: %s [-emV] [-c config] query",
 			baseName(args[0]));
 		return 1;
 	}
@@ -110,7 +133,9 @@ main(string[] args)
 	}
 
 	try
-		writeln(esv.searchFormat(query));
+		writeln(mFlag
+			? esv.searchFormat(query, &machineReadableFmt)
+			: esv.searchFormat(query));
 	catch (ESVException)
 		die("no results");
 	catch (CurlException e)