Harvard Referencing: Rules, Examples and Versions

Your module handbook says “reference in Harvard style”, and the three examples you find online all look slightly different. That is not your mistake. It happens because there is no single Harvard style.

Harvard referencing is an author-date system: you put a short citation with the author's surname, the year of publication and, where relevant, a page number in brackets in the body of your text, you do not use footnotes for it, and the full details go into an alphabetical reference list at the end. Which version applies to you is decided by your course, not by Harvard. We show you the Cite Them Right version used across most UK universities and the points where other versions differ.

📌 Key points at a glance

• Harvard referencing is an author-date system without footnotes.
• No organisation owns or maintains Harvard style.
• Cite Them Right is the version most UK universities follow.
• Four or more authors: name the first, then et al.
• Cite Them Right dropped the place of publication in 2025.

What is Harvard referencing?

Harvard referencing is a referencing system in which the source appears in shortened form in the body of the text, in round brackets, giving the author's surname, the year of publication and a page number where one is needed. The full details of every source appear in a reference list at the end of the work.

In the United Kingdom the word Harvard describes a family rather than a rulebook. The University of Westminster puts it plainly in its referencing guide: Harvard is a generic term used in the UK for the author-date approach, and the specific style it recommends is Cite Them Right. University College London says the same in its Harvard guide and asks students to match the version in their course handbook.

The name is also misleading. The author-date principle goes back to the zoologist Edward Laurens Mark, who used it in an 1881 paper written at Harvard University; Eli Chernin (1988) traced that history in the British Medical Journal. There is no institutional link to Harvard University today. The Harvard Library says so in its own FAQ and adds that it publishes no guide to the system, because its researchers mostly use APA, Chicago or MLA.

Harvard University publishes no guide to Harvard referencing.

Why there is no single Harvard style

There is no official Harvard rule because no organisation maintains the style. Unlike APA, MLA or Chicago, Harvard has no manual, no edition number and no body that decides what is correct. What remains is a shared principle, author and year in brackets, surrounded by dozens of house versions.

Birmingham Newman University states this in its referencing guide and draws a practical conclusion from it: Harvard referencing is not a unified system controlled by one organisation, so an online reference generator may well produce something that does not match the version your university expects. If you use one, the library advises choosing a tool that can produce Cite Them Right output.

The two systems look almost identical in the text and diverge in the details, which is exactly why a mixed set of examples is dangerous. Cite Them Right is a commercial publication rather than a free standard: universities buy access to the online database for their students, and the printed 13th edition appeared in July 2025.

One instruction follows from all this. Take the guidance issued by your own course, keep to a single pattern and apply it consistently. Where no guidance exists, pick one version and stay with it.

💡 Tip

Rather than asking which Harvard style is correct, ask your tutor for an example. One in-text citation and one book reference from a well marked assignment settle the question faster than any list of rules.

In-text citations: how they are built

A Harvard in-text citation gives the author's surname, the year of publication and, where you quote or refer to a specific passage, a page number. It sits in round brackets next to the point it supports. Titles, publishers and full names stay out of the text and belong in the reference list.

The examples below follow the Cite Them Right pattern used by the Open University and by most UK libraries. All names in the examples are invented.

Harvard citations with one, two, three or more authors

How many names appear depends on how many people wrote the source. Up to three authors are named in full, separated by commas and the word and. From four authors onwards you name the first and add et al. in italics. This threshold is a common source of error, because APA switches to et al. one author earlier.

• One author: Good referencing is an academic skill (Harris, 2015, p. 5).
• Two authors: Good referencing is an academic skill (Shah and Papadopoulos, 2015).
• Three authors: Good referencing is an academic skill (Wong, Smith and Adebole, 2015).
• Four or more authors: Good referencing is an academic skill (Wong et al., 2015).

Citing several sources at the same point

When one statement rests on several sources, they all go into the same brackets, separated by semicolons. Put them in date order or in alphabetical order, but use the same order throughout your work. Every source named in the brackets needs its own entry in the reference list.

• Several studies show this pattern (Smith, 2020; Jones and Roberts, 2021; Singh, 2024).

Secondary referencing in Harvard style

Secondary referencing applies when you have not read a source yourself and only know it through the work that quotes it. Cite Them Right asks for both works in the citation, joined by cited in or quoted in, and only the work you actually read goes into the reference list. Track down the original whenever you can, because a secondary reference is a compromise.

• Positive identity is affirmed by family support (Leach, 2015, cited in Birch, 2017, p. 17).

Page numbers, no date and no named author

A page number belongs in a Harvard citation whenever you quote directly, paraphrase closely or draw on a specific page or set of pages. Use p. for one page and pp. for a range. You do not need one when you summarise a whole chapter or article in a sentence.

The Open University adds two useful extensions to that rule. Where a source has no page numbers, such as a web page, give a paragraph number instead, written as para. 3. For video and audio, give a timestamp in minutes and seconds, so that a reader can find the passage you mean rather than the whole recording.

Missing details have their own conventions. Where no publication date can be found, write no date in place of the year, in the citation and in the reference. Where no person is named, use the organisation as the author, and where no organisation exists either, use the title of the source in italics. Cite Them Right also advises treating a page with no author and no date as a warning sign about the quality of the source.

The reference list

A Harvard reference list contains the full details of every source you cited in the text, arranged alphabetically by the author's surname in a single sequence. It starts on a new page and carries the heading References. Sources you read but did not cite belong in a bibliography, which most courses do not ask for.

Each entry follows the same order: who, when, what and where it was published. What sits behind the where depends on the type of source. The four types below cover most of an undergraduate assignment.

• Book: Bell, J. (2014) Doing your research project. Open University Press.
• Chapter in an edited book: Franklin, A.W. (2012) 'Management of the problem', in S.M. Smith (ed.), The maltreatment of children. MTP, pp. 83–95.
• Journal article: Barke, M. and Mowl, G. (2016) 'Málaga, a failed resort of the early twentieth century?', Journal of Tourism History, 2(3), pp. 187–212. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1755182X.2010.523145.
• Web page: Robinson, J. (2007) Social variation across the UK. Available at: https://www.bl.uk/british-accents-and-dialects (Accessed: 12 August 2026).

Two habits save time later. Use a DOI in place of a URL whenever one exists, and leave out the accessed date when you do. For sources that only exist online, record the accessed date as you read, because you will not reconstruct it afterwards. Our guide to citing internet sources covers the parts an online reference needs, and the guide to citing books does the same for print and e-books.

What changed in 2025: the place of publication

The place of publication has been dropped from book references in Cite Them Right, which is the single most visible change for UK students in years. The University of Westminster records it in its referencing guide: since the 13th edition appeared, the place of publication is no longer included in references to books.

APA made the same move earlier. Since the seventh edition of the Publication Manual in 2020, book and chapter references carry no publisher location at all, only the publisher name. Two of the systems a British student is most likely to meet have therefore converged on the shorter form.

What this means in practice is a dating problem rather than a rule problem. Guidance written before July 2025, including printed handouts and older library pages, still shows London: Palgrave Macmillan in its examples. Check the date of any pattern you copy, and if your course still works from the 12th edition, follow the course. Consistency matters more than being first to the new edition.

Common mistakes in Harvard referencing

Most marks lost on referencing are lost to inconsistency rather than ignorance. Four mistakes come up again and again, and all four can be cleared in a single pass before submission.

Switching to et al. one author too early

Cite Them Right names all three authors of a three-author source and only moves to et al. from four authors onwards. APA switches at three. A reference manager set to the wrong output style will make that change silently across an entire assignment, which is why the setting is worth checking once rather than every reference.

Using a generator that produces a different Harvard

An online generator does not know your course requirements. Birmingham Newman University warns that references produced by such tools may not match the version the university expects and advises choosing one that can output Cite Them Right style. Whatever the tool produces still needs checking against the pattern your course uses.

Putting the reference list and the bibliography in the same section

A reference list contains only the sources cited in the text. A bibliography adds background reading that was not cited. Mixing the two produces entries with nothing to point at them, and most UK courses ask for a reference list alone. Check the assignment brief before you add anything you did not cite.

Leaving out page numbers for close paraphrase

Page numbers are needed for quotations and for anything drawn from a specific passage, not only for direct quotes. Leaving them out of a close paraphrase makes the claim hard to verify and reads as if the whole source were being summarised. Add them as you write, because finding them again after the fact takes far longer.

Conclusion

Harvard referencing is quick to learn and easy to get wrong, because it exists in dozens of house versions. Find out which version your course expects, keep one pattern for the in-text citation and one for the reference list, and apply both without variation. Consistency is what is actually being marked.

Where to go next

• Want the basics from the start? Citing sources correctly: the guide
• Working with footnotes instead? The footnote citation style explained
• Referencing a book right now? How to cite a book

Do you need your own data for your dissertation?

You do not reference your own survey, you describe it in the methods section. With empirio.ai, an online survey tool from Germany with EU hosting, you can build one for free. Our guide to creating a questionnaire covers the structure.