Harvard referencing

Harvard referencing is a citation system developed by Harvard University and used by publishers all over the world. It also known as the author-date system, for example in the Chicago Manual of Style. 

Book titles are cited in the text in parentheses after the sentence, using the surname of the author and the year only, with the parentheses closing before the period, as in (Author 2005). Newspaper articles may be cited by newspaper title (The Guardian 2005) or by the byline, as in (Bowcott 2005).

If the same author has published two books in 2005, and both are being referenced in the text, this is written as (Author 2005a) and (Author 2005b). In the case of multiple newspaper-article citations in the same text, the date of the articles is used, as in (The Guardian, October 18, 2005).

All citations should be in the same-sized font as the text.

Complete citations for all works cited are provided in alphabetical order in a section following the text, usually designated as "Works cited" or "References" (note: the difference between "works cited" and a bibliography is that a bibliography section may include works not cited).

Example of book reference:


 * Smith, J. (2005a). Harvard Referencing, Wherever, Florida:Wikimedia Foundation. ISBN 11112222X.
 * Smith, J. (2005b). More Harvard Referencing, Wherever, Florida:Wikimedia Foundation. ISBN 11112223X.

Example of newspaper-article reference:


 * Bowcott, O. "Protests halt online auction to shoot stag", The Guardian, October 18, 2005

Referencing rules
Publications and organizations have specific requirements for references and citations which authors must follow.

Referencing rules contain details such as:
 * For two authors, use (Smith & Jones, 2005); for more authors, use (Smith et al, 2005).
 * If the "References" section contains two or more works by the same author but published in the same year, use a letter after the year to distinguish the different sources (for example, (Smith 2005a) and (Smith 2005b). ''Make sure that the in-text citations use the correct letters that correspond to the full citation in the "References" at the end of the article.
 * Some books have been reprinted several times over the course of the year. Sometimes they have gone through several editions, and sometimes a book may be published by several different publishers. Obviously it is important that all citations refer to the same edition by the same publisher, and that this information be included in the reference at the end of the article.
 * If the date of publication is unavailable, use "n.d." (meaning, no date)
 * Many times authors use an edition of a book that was published long after the original publication. In such cases, many people put the original date of publication in square brackets followed by the date of publication of the edition used by the author who is making the citation.  For example, a citation might be
 * (Marx [1867] 1967: 90)

and the complete reference would be:
 * Marx, Karl [1867] 1967  Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. I. Edited by Frederick Engels. New York: International Publishers.


 * When you can (or should) provide a page number, the convention is (Smith 2005: 73).
 * When the citation provides the reference for a quote that is within the text and marked by quotation marks, the citation follows the end-quotation mark ("), and precedes the period (.)
 * When the citation provides the reference for a quote that is indented, it follows the period.
 * When the author of the reference is named as part of the text itself, the year is placed in parentheses; for example "Smith (2005) says ..."