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- Harvard In-Text Citation | A Complete Guide & Examples
Harvard In-Text Citation | A Complete Guide & Examples
Published on 30 April 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on 5 May 2022.
An in-text citation should appear wherever you quote or paraphrase a source in your writing, pointing your reader to the full reference .
In Harvard style , citations appear in brackets in the text. An in-text citation consists of the last name of the author, the year of publication, and a page number if relevant.
Up to three authors are included in Harvard in-text citations. If there are four or more authors, the citation is shortened with et al .
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Table of contents
Including page numbers in citations, where to place harvard in-text citations, citing sources with missing information, frequently asked questions about harvard in-text citations.
When you quote directly from a source or paraphrase a specific passage, your in-text citation must include a page number to specify where the relevant passage is located.
Use ‘p.’ for a single page and ‘pp.’ for a page range:
- Meanwhile, another commentator asserts that the economy is ‘on the downturn’ (Singh, 2015, p. 13 ).
- Wilson (2015, pp. 12–14 ) makes an argument for the efficacy of the technique.
If you are summarising the general argument of a source or paraphrasing ideas that recur throughout the text, no page number is needed.
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When incorporating citations into your text, you can either name the author directly in the text or only include the author’s name in brackets.
Naming the author in the text
When you name the author in the sentence itself, the year and (if relevant) page number are typically given in brackets straight after the name:
Naming the author directly in your sentence is the best approach when you want to critique or comment on the source.
Naming the author in brackets
When you you haven’t mentioned the author’s name in your sentence, include it inside the brackets. The citation is generally placed after the relevant quote or paraphrase, or at the end of the sentence, before the full stop:
Multiple citations can be included in one place, listed in order of publication year and separated by semicolons:
This type of citation is useful when you want to support a claim or summarise the overall findings of sources.
Common mistakes with in-text citations
In-text citations in brackets should not appear as the subject of your sentences. Anything that’s essential to the meaning of a sentence should be written outside the brackets:
- (Smith, 2019) argues that…
- Smith (2019) argues that…
Similarly, don’t repeat the author’s name in the bracketed citation and in the sentence itself:
- As Caulfield (Caulfield, 2020) writes…
- As Caulfield (2020) writes…
Sometimes you won’t have access to all the source information you need for an in-text citation. Here’s what to do if you’re missing the publication date, author’s name, or page numbers for a source.
If a source doesn’t list a clear publication date, as is sometimes the case with online sources or historical documents, replace the date with the words ‘no date’:
When it’s not clear who the author of a source is, you’ll sometimes be able to substitute a corporate author – the group or organisation responsible for the publication:
When there’s no corporate author to cite, you can use the title of the source in place of the author’s name:
No page numbers
If you quote from a source without page numbers, such as a website, you can just omit this information if it’s a short text – it should be easy enough to find the quote without it.
If you quote from a longer source without page numbers, it’s best to find an alternate location marker, such as a paragraph number or subheading, and include that:
A Harvard in-text citation should appear in brackets every time you quote, paraphrase, or refer to information from a source.
The citation can appear immediately after the quotation or paraphrase, or at the end of the sentence. If you’re quoting, place the citation outside of the quotation marks but before any other punctuation like a comma or full stop.
In Harvard referencing, up to three author names are included in an in-text citation or reference list entry. When there are four or more authors, include only the first, followed by ‘ et al. ’
In Harvard style , when you quote directly from a source that includes page numbers, your in-text citation must include a page number. For example: (Smith, 2014, p. 33).
You can also include page numbers to point the reader towards a passage that you paraphrased . If you refer to the general ideas or findings of the source as a whole, you don’t need to include a page number.
When you want to use a quote but can’t access the original source, you can cite it indirectly. In the in-text citation , first mention the source you want to refer to, and then the source in which you found it. For example:
It’s advisable to avoid indirect citations wherever possible, because they suggest you don’t have full knowledge of the sources you’re citing. Only use an indirect citation if you can’t reasonably gain access to the original source.
In Harvard style referencing , to distinguish between two sources by the same author that were published in the same year, you add a different letter after the year for each source:
- (Smith, 2019a)
- (Smith, 2019b)
Add ‘a’ to the first one you cite, ‘b’ to the second, and so on. Do the same in your bibliography or reference list .
Cite this Scribbr article
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Caulfield, J. (2022, May 05). Harvard In-Text Citation | A Complete Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 11 November 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/referencing/harvard-in-text-citation/
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What Is Harvard Referencing Style? Formatting, Tips, and Examples
Harvard-style referencing may seem intimidating—after all, Harvard (the university) is not known for being easy. But the truth is, the Harvard citation format is fairly straightforward. Once you get the hang of it, using it will become second nature.
In this article, we teach you the ins and outs of Harvard-style referencing so that you can make it a part of your academic writing . We’ll cover how to make a Harvard reference list and where to use parenthetical citations. We’ll also share other tidbits to help you write perfect citations every time.
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What is Harvard-style referencing?
Harvard-style referencing is a type of international citation format for academic papers, with a focus on parenthetical citations . It is commonly used for educational assignments like research papers, as well as scientific papers.
Don’t let the name fool you though—Harvard-style referencing is not officially associated with Harvard University, although it was first seen in the work of someone affiliated with the school. It was (likely) first used by Edward Laurens Mark, a director of the zoological laboratory at Harvard. More interestingly, Mark’s paper, and Harvard-style referencing in general, is probably the first recorded use of the parenthetical citation as a whole.
Harvard-style referencing vs. MLA, APA, and Chicago
The Harvard citation format is in the same league as the other popular styles for academic writing: APA format , MLA format , and the Chicago Manual of Style format .
Because it uses parenthetical citations with the author’s last name (surname) and the date of publication, the Harvard citation format is considered an author-date format . As such, it’s similar to APA style, although there are some minor differences in the content and punctuation of the full citation.
Harvard citation format: In-text citations
The Harvard citation format uses parenthetical author-date citations embedded within the text. In this style, the citation places the last name of the author and the year of publication within parentheses . Keep in mind, you’ll also need a full citation at the end of the paper in the reference list.
In-text citations come after a sentence, clause, or paragraph using that source’s information. The citation comes at the end of a passage but before punctuation marks like periods or commas.
The Harvard citation format uses the author’s last name and the year of publication. If the page number is relevant, as in citations for a direct quote, you can include it with the abbreviation p. , for one page, or pp. , for a page range.
Humans use one type of thinking for instinctive, emotional decisions, but a different type of thinking for slower, more strategic decisions (Kahneman, 2011).
“The attentive System 2 is who we think we are [ . . . ] but it often endorses or rationalizes ideas and feelings that were generated by System 1” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 406).
Like other styles, the Harvard citation format also allows narrative citations , where the author and/or year is mentioned directly in the text. In this case, repeating that information in the citation is redundant, so it can be omitted. In other words, the parenthetical citation should include only information not mentioned in the text.
As Daniel Kahneman says on page 406, System 2 “often endorses or rationalizes ideas and feelings that were generated by System 1” (2011).
Harvard citation format: Reference list citations
Like most academic writing formats, Harvard-style referencing requires a bibliography at the end of the work that contains full citations for all sources used. This bibliography is known as the reference list, and it’s similar to APA’s reference page and MLA’s works cited page .
Each source entry contains (if applicable):
- the name of the author, inverted with the last name first and with an initial for the first name
- the year of publication
- the full title, including subtitles
- the edition number
- the place of publication (usually a city)
- the name of the publisher
- the name of the journal, with volume and page numbers
- the URL and accessed date for online materials
Each piece of information is presented in a specific way, with unique rules for punctuation and capitalization. You can see examples of the Harvard citation format below.
All entries are placed on the reference list page in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. Multiple works from the same author(s) are organized by date. The reference list should be a separate piece of paper and double-spaced, with the title “Reference List” at the top.
Harvard citation format for multiple authors
Most style guides have their own particular rules about citing sources with multiple authors, and Harvard-style referencing is no different. We’ve already explained the guidelines for sources with one author, but here are the rules for two or more authors. If you’re including the page numbers, you can simply add a comma after the year and write it there, inside the parentheses.
Keep in mind that, as with other narrative citations, if you mention all the authors in the text itself, you can omit them from the parenthetical citation.
Harvard referencing: Book
Book citations in the reference list follow a very specific formula. Pay close attention to the punctuation and italics in the following example.
Last name of author, Initial of first name. (Year of publication) Title in sentence case. #th edn. Place of publication: Publisher name.
Here’s a specific example of Harvard referencing for books with the source used above:
Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, fast and slow . 2nd edn. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Harvard referencing: Article
For journal articles in Harvard-style referencing, you need to include the same information as with other sources, plus the journal’s name, volume, issue, and page numbers. If you read the article online, you also need the URL or DOI and the date you accessed it, plus the word online written in brackets.
Here’s the formula for citing articles in Harvard style:
Last name, Initial. (Year of publication) ‘Title of article,’ Title of journal, volume #(issue #), #–# [online]. Available at: URL or DOI (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Put it all together, and your full citation should look like this:
Lu, T. and Chen, F. (2011) ‘Multiwfn: A multifunctional wavefunction analyzer,’ Journal of Computational Chemistry , 33(5), pp. 580–592 [online]. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jcc.22885 (Accessed: 27 August 2023).
Remember that if you use a print source, you don’t need the “online” tag, URL, or access date.
Lu, T. and Chen, F. (2011) ‘Multiwfn: A multifunctional wavefunction analyzer,’ Journal of Computational Chemistry , 33(5), pp. 580–592.
Harvard referencing: Website
Websites in Harvard-style referencing are fairly simple, especially compared to other types of sources. For publication information, you need only the name of the web page and the author (or organization that published it). However, you also need to include the URL and the date you accessed it, as well as the word online in brackets.
Plug in your source’s information to this formula to cite websites in Harvard style:
Last name, Initial. / Name of organization. (Year of publication) Title of page/site [online]. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
A real-life citation example would look like this:
Grammarly. (2023) A guide to in-text citations: APA, MLA, and Chicago [online]. Available at: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/in-text-citations (Accessed: 2 August 2023).
Harvard-style referencing FAQs
Harvard-style referencing is a type of international citation format for academic papers, with a focus on parenthetical citations. It is commonly used for educational assignments like research papers, as well as scientific papers.
What are the parts of the Harvard citation format?
For in-text citations, Harvard-style referencing follows an author-date format, which uses the author’s last name and the year of publication within parentheses. This parenthetical citation goes at the end of each sentence, clause, or paragraph with the source’s information. At the end of the paper or work, you also need a reference list with a full citation for each source.
How do you write a full citation in Harvard-style referencing?
In the reference list at the end of your paper or work, you need a full citation for each source with the author’s name, year of publication, and title. Depending on the type of source, you may also need the publisher’s name and location, the URL or DOI, and the date you accessed the source for online documents. Journal articles also require the volume, issue, and page numbers.
