Harvard Referencing Style

A Complete Guide On In-Text Citation In Harvard Referencing Style

Education

References in dissertations, essays and reports are essential to complete the academic research. You cannot submit your academic work without a reference list and citing the source of information. It is the scholar’s responsibility to give credit for the information included by him in the study. There are various referencing styles, including MLA, APA, Chicago, etc. Harvard referencing style is one of them and commonly acceptable one in UK universities. Besides just adding the reference entry, citing your text properly is another integral part of academic work. Citation means giving credit to authors within the text.

Like in each referencing, Harvard referencing style has some rules and students are expected to follow them all in their academic work. Following all the rules is not easy as there are different ways to cite the article, book, report, or website. The use of in-text citations is also different for one, two and three authors. Moreover, all this information is easily available on the internet but not consolidated. You have to do multiple searches to collect all the relevant information. That’s why most students prefer to buy dissertation online to avoid all such situations. However, In this article, you can find all the relevant and complete information on Harvard referencing style.

Importance and Need of Harvard Referencing Style in Dissertation and Assignments

Harvard Referencing Style is an effective way of using someone else’s research in your dissertations and assignments. If there is no source included in the facts and figures of your papers, then it is considered academic misconduct. It also results in plagiarized content due to lack of source of information. Harvard Referencing System is a complete and comprehensive way to cite and reference the information. It meets the need of scholars and increases the quality of the paper. It provides a proper way of presenting the author’s name, year of publication and journal’s name. Further, it makes it easy for teachers to trace the source of information and reduce the issues of including fake information in the assignments.

Guidance For References List and Intext Citation

Article Citation

When citing the source in the text, there is a need to use the author’s surname and year of publication in the brackets. It is important to use a ‘comma’ between the year of publication and the author’s surname. If there is more than one author, then use “and” between the authors’ names. If there are more than two authors, use the first author surname, followed by “et al.,” and then the year of publication.

Article with the single writer:

(Harry, 2020).

Article with two authors:

(Harry and Nicholson, 2020).

Article with three or more authors:

(Harry et al., 2020).

While using a direct in-text citation, use the following way of Harvard Referencing System. For instance, ‘according to Harry (2022)’, the rest is the same for two and three authors. Moreover, you can use multiple sources to support your statement, e.g., Harry, 2020; Nicholson et al., 2021, etc. This is one of the most basic and easy ways to use the intext within your statement.

Book Citation

Books are another important source of information to use in assignments and papers. Books are also cited in a similar way as academic journals. Use the author’s surname with a comma and year of the publication within brackets. Following are a few examples of a book citation:

Book with the single writer:

(Harry, 2020)

Book with two authors:

(Harry and Nicholson, 2020).

Book with three or more authors:

(Harry et al., 2020).

Website Citation

The use of different companies’ websites and government institutes’ statistics as the source of information is important for making the paper more credible with the use of facts and figures. Sometimes, there is an author’s name for the published information on the company’s website. In this case, it is better to use the author’s surname along with the year of publication. When there is no author’s name, use the website’s name and then the year of publication. If there is no publishing date, then use “n.d” (undated). Following is the method of website and webpage in-text citation.

A website with author/owner name:

(Welly, 2022).

A website without author/owner name:

(Tesco, 2022).

A website without any date:

(Tesco, n.d.).

Article Reference

The referencing list is the complete information about the in-text citation used by students or scholars in the paper. In a complete reference, there is an author’s surname with initials in case of one author or surnames with initials in case of more than one. The article’s title and journal’s name are the rest of the information in a reference. The volume, issue and page number are the publishing information of a reference. There should be full detail about all authors’ names in the references list to make it authentic. Following is the method to write an article reference in Harvard Referencing System;

Article with single author:

Anna, C.G., 2022. The Importance of Leadership Styles. Journal of Leadership, 2(4), pp.1-3.

Article with two authors:

Anna, C.G. and Mores, N.G., 2022. The Importance of Leadership Styles. Journal of Leadership, 2(4), pp.1-3.

The same method is used for three or more authors to write the source in the references list.

Book Reference

A book reference consists of the author’s surname, initials, year of publication, book title, edition, publishing place, and the name of the publisher in the reference. Following is the method for book references in Harvard Referencing System;

Book with one author:

Freud, S.J., 2021. Introduction to Psychotherapy. London: Oxford

Book with two authors:

Anna, F.C. and Freud, S.J., 2021. Introduction to Psychotherapy. London: Oxford

The rest is the same for more than three authors.

Website Reference

There is a different method for website reference in the Harvard Referencing System compared to books and articles. It consists of a website’s name in the absence of the author’s name, including the title of the webpage that is accessible online.

In the case of the author:

Ford, A.G., 2022. Sustainability [Online]. Available at: https://www.tesco.com/sustainability/ (Accessed 04 February 2022)

Without author:

Tesco. 2022. Sustainability [Online]. Available at: https://www.tesco.com/sustainability/ (Accessed 04 February 2022)

Conclusion

Harvard Referencing System is a commonly accepted format to cite the source of information in papers. It helps reduce issues of validity and keep the source of information in an acceptable format..