Harvard Referencing: The Complete Guide

Quick Answer: how to reference in Harvard

Put the author's surname and the year in round brackets wherever you use a source, add a page number for a quotation or a specific passage, and give the full details once in a Reference list ordered alphabetically by surname. In Cite Them Right Harvard the year sits in brackets with no full stop after it, article and chapter titles take single quotation marks, book and journal titles are italicised, and online sources end with Available at: URL (Accessed: 12 May 2026).

What "Harvard referencing" actually means

Harvard is a name for a method, not a publication. Any style that cites by author and year in the text and lists sources alphabetically at the end is a Harvard-type or author-date style, which is why APA and Chicago author-date look so similar to it. Harvard University does not publish or maintain it; the university's own library calls the name a misnomer and directs its students to APA, Chicago or MLA. What a UK or Australian handbook calls "Harvard" is therefore always somebody's particular version, and the versions disagree about commas, brackets, places of publication and access dates.

The version most UK universities point to is Cite Them Right: The Essential Referencing Guide by Richard Pears and Graham Shields, now in its 13th edition (2025), with the same content online at Cite Them Right Online. This guide uses Cite Them Right's rules throughout. The 13th edition made one change worth knowing: it dropped the place of publication from book references, so Halcyon Press. replaces Newcastle: Halcyon Press. If your department's sheet still shows a place, it was written from the 12th edition or earlier and you should follow the sheet. Every example below is Cite Them Right Harvard; where a variant changes something you would notice, the difference is called out in the text. The comparison with APA, which many students confuse with Harvard, is a separate page: Harvard vs APA.

In-text citations: (Author, Year) and (Author, Year, p. X)

A Harvard citation is the surname of the author (or the name of the organisation) and the year of publication. It goes inside round brackets at the point where you use the source, or the name goes into your sentence and only the year sits in brackets. Add a page number whenever you quote, and whenever you refer to a specific passage rather than the work as a whole. Cite Them Right puts a comma between the author and the year; some older Harvard sheets and most Australian sheets leave it out, so copy whichever your university shows. The full set of forms is on the Harvard in-text citation page.

Quotations

Cite Them Right uses single quotation marks for a short quotation run into your sentence, with a page number in the citation. A quotation longer than about two or three lines is set as an indented block without quotation marks, and the citation follows it. Double quotation marks are used only for a quotation inside a quotation. Use p. for one page and pp. for a range; for a source without page numbers, such as a web page, give a paragraph or section if the reader would otherwise struggle to find the passage, or give nothing at all.

Reference list entries for the main source types

Every reference follows the same skeleton: who (surname and initials, or the organisation), when (the year in round brackets), what (the title, italicised for a whole work and in single quotation marks for a part of a work), then the details a reader needs to find it. Titles are written in sentence case: capital for the first word and proper nouns only. Initials are followed by full stops and no spaces (Marlowe, J. and Bhattacharya, S.), though some sheets space them. The worked pages for a book, a journal article and a website go into more edge cases than there is room for here.

Book

Author, year, italic title, edition if it is not the first, publisher. Cite Them Right 13 gives no place of publication; add Place: before the publisher only if your sheet still asks for it. For an ebook that looks like the print book (a PDF with page numbers, or a library copy), reference it as a print book. For an ebook read on a device without fixed pages, add Available at: URL (Accessed: date). Editors take (ed.) or (eds) after the name.

Chapter in an edited book

Reference the chapter author, not the editor, because that is the name you cite in the text. The chapter title takes single quotation marks, then in introduces the editor and the italic book title, and the page range of the chapter closes the entry.

Journal article with a DOI

The article title goes in single quotation marks and the journal title in italics, followed by the volume, the issue in brackets, and the page range with pp. If the article has a DOI, give it as a full https://doi.org/ link after Available at:. Cite Them Right and most university FAQs do not add an accessed date after a DOI, because a DOI is permanent; some sheets add one anyway, and that is not wrong if you do it consistently. An article read in print, or as a PDF identical to the print version, can stop at the page range. An article that exists only online and has no DOI takes Available at: URL (Accessed: date). See how to use DOIs for finding one.

Website or web page

The author is often an organisation; use the name exactly as the site gives it, and use it again as the in-text citation. The page title is italicised. Give the year the page was published or last updated; if there is none, write (no date) in both the reference and the citation. Web references always end with the URL and the date you read the page, in the form (Accessed: 12 May 2026). — day, month written out, year, inside round brackets, followed by a full stop. Do not add the site name after the title unless it differs from the author.

Report

Reports are usually published by the organisation that wrote them, so the same name can appear as author and, for a print report, as publisher. Add a report or series number in round brackets after the publisher when there is one. A report read online is referenced like a web document, with Available at: and an accessed date. The worked page for a report in Harvard covers government and company reports.

Lecture or lecture slides

Cite Them Right treats a lecture you attended and slides posted on the virtual learning environment as different sources, and both use a square-bracketed description after the title. Give the module code and title, then the institution, and the date of the lecture. Slides downloaded from the VLE take an Available at: line and an accessed date. Check your sheet before relying on this pattern: lectures are the source type where university variants diverge most, and some departments tell students not to reference lectures at all but to find the published source the lecturer used. The lecture notes page shows more variants.

Online video (YouTube and similar)

The author is the person or channel that posted the video, using the screen name shown. The video title is italicised, the day and month of posting follow it, and the entry ends with the URL and an accessed date. If a real name and a screen name are both known, Cite Them Right lets you give the screen name alone. See a YouTube video in Harvard for playlists and timestamps.

Newspaper article

The article title takes single quotation marks and the newspaper title is italicised. A print article ends with the day, month and page; an online article replaces the page with Available at: and an accessed date. If no journalist is named, begin with the newspaper title in the author position and cite the newspaper in the text. See a newspaper article in Harvard.

Secondary referencing: "cited in"

Secondary referencing is citing a work you have not read because another work you have read discusses it. Cite Them Right's rule is simple: name both in the text, using cited in for a paraphrase and quoted in for a direct quotation, and put only the work you actually read in the reference list. Use this sparingly; markers expect you to find the original when it is available. Give the page of the source you read, not the page of the original.

Formatting the reference list

• Heading: Reference list or References. Use Bibliography only if the list also contains works you read but did not cite, and only if your sheet allows that — see reference list vs bibliography.
• Order: one alphabetical list by the first author's surname (or organisation name), whatever the source type. Do not split books from websites, and do not number the entries.
• Same author, several works: oldest first. Same author, same year: add a, b, c after the year in the order the titles fall alphabetically, and use the same letters in the text.
• Same surname, different authors: order by initials. An organisation is filed under the first significant word of its name.
• Indentation: Cite Them Right does not require a hanging indent. Many UK sheets use none; some ask for one. If yours does, the hanging indent formatter applies it.
• Spacing: usually single-spaced entries with a blank line between them, but this is a university rule rather than a Cite Them Right rule.
• Every citation matches an entry and every entry has at least one citation. Personal communications such as emails and conversations are cited in the text only, with the date, and do not appear in the list.

Cite Them Right Harvard next to Australian Harvard

The variant that trips up students moving between systems is Australian Harvard, descended from the Australian Government Publishing Service Style Manual, 6th edition (2002), and still the basis of many Australian and New Zealand university sheets. The rules are the same author-date idea, but almost every punctuation choice differs. The current online Australian Government Style Manual has since moved to a form with the year in brackets, so an Australian sheet may show either; again, copy the sheet.

How to check which Harvard your university wants

1. Read the assignment brief and the module handbook first. If either names a version ("Cite Them Right Harvard", "ARU Harvard", "UWE Harvard") or links to a PDF, that document wins over everything, including this guide.
2. If the brief only says "Harvard", search your library website for referencing. Most UK libraries have a page that names their version; the University of Westminster and University of Dundee pages are typical examples that name Cite Them Right. Anglia Ruskin publishes its own guide and Leeds publishes Leeds Harvard.
3. Compare one book reference from that page against the variants table above. The year (brackets or not), the place of publication, and the wording before the URL tell you which family you are in.
4. Check three details that vary even between Cite Them Right sheets: whether initials are spaced, where et al. starts in the reference list, and whether an accessed date follows a DOI.
5. Pick one version and use it everywhere. Markers penalise a mixture far more than they penalise a variant they did not expect.
6. Run the finished list through the Harvard citation checker for missing elements and punctuation slips.

Common Harvard mistakes

• A full stop after the year: Marlowe, J. (2023). is APA punctuation, not Cite Them Right.
• An ampersand between authors: Harvard writes Adeyemi, F. and Roux, C., and (Adeyemi and Roux, 2021) in the text.
• Double quotation marks round article titles, or no quotation marks at all. Cite Them Right uses single ones.
• Italicising the article title and leaving the journal title plain. It is the other way round.
• Accessed 12 May 2026 without the colon and brackets, or a US-order date such as May 12, 2026. Write (Accessed: 12 May 2026).
• Citing the editor instead of the chapter author for a chapter in an edited book.
• Listing the original work in a secondary reference when you only read the work that cited it.
• Switching to et al. at three authors in the text. Cite Them Right names three and shortens at four.
• A bibliography padded with unread sources when the brief asked for a reference list.
• Mixing two variants: a Leeds-style year without brackets in one entry and Cite Them Right brackets in the next.

Related guides and official manuals

• Harvard vs APA: differences and when to use each
• Referencing vs citing: what is the difference?
• Reference list vs bibliography
• How to cite a website in Harvard (examples)
• How to cite a book in Harvard (examples)
• How to cite a journal article in Harvard (examples)
• How to cite a book chapter in Harvard (examples)
• Citing multiple authors
• Citing a source with no author
• Citing a source with no date
• How to use DOIs
• Which citation style should I use?
• Cite Them Right Online
• Harvard Library: is there a Harvard citation style?
• University of Westminster: Harvard (Cite Them Right) guide
• University of Dundee: Harvard referencing
• Anglia Ruskin University: Harvard referencing guide
• University of Leeds: Leeds Harvard introduction