Conventions of the Havard Referencing Style
What do you need to know about the Havard Referencing Style?
Havard referencing is a citation style that writers across the world use for their academic work
Citing your references in the Harvard style is a two-part process:
- In-text citation
Commonly known as the Author-Date citation.
Generally, all variations of Harvard referencing use an author-date format.
It majorly consists of the author’s last name, the year of publication, and page numbers (if it is a direct quote) in round brackets placed within the text. If there is no distinguishable author, use the title and date.
An in-text citation follows these conventions
- If you are directly quoting from a source, be keen to include the page number in your reference.
- If your quote consists of more than two lines, you should present it as a new paragraph that is preceded by a colon and indented from the rest of the text. You don’t have to use quotation marks.
- If you will omit any materials from the source, use three dots […] to indicate an omission.
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Examples
Ancient humans “didn’t fly by helicopter” (Diamond, 1997, p. 49).
If you mention the author in the main text, you don’t need to duplicate it in the citation:
According to Diamond (1997), Australia is unique in the history of human development.
The Basic Reference format is:
Author, A.A. (Year) Title of book. Edition. Place: Publisher.
- Reference list:
Harvard referencing requires all sources cited in your text to also be on your reference list at the end of your work with full publication information.
A reference list is a complete list of all the cited references used in your work with full bibliographic details. A reference list allows the reader to follow up on these references and find the original text.
The reference list should be in alphabetic order, beginning with the last name of the first author of each work. References with no distinguishable author are put in alphabetic order by the first significant word of the title.
It would be best if you used only the initials of the authors’ given names. Do not use full stop and space between the initials. The last name comes first.
A reference list must follow these conventions:
- List all cited sources
- Appear on a different sheet at the end of the document
- Sources should be in alphabetic order by author surname
- Various works by the same author should be listed beginning with earliest by publication date
- Where sources have multiple authors, give all names regardless of how many
- Double spacing: there should be a whole, blank line of space between each line of text
How to Cite a Website in Harvard Format
The basic citation format for website in Havard:
Author surname(s), initial(s). (Year of publishing) Title of page/site [Online[. Available at: URL (Accessed: day month year)
Mitchell, J.A. (2017) How and when to reference [Online]. Available at: https://www.howandwhentoreference.com/ (Accessed: 27 May 2017)