Harvard Referencing Style

The word “Harvard” may sound cool, especially in combination with “university” (and if you are a student of this university).

But the truth is:

For most students, the word is associated not with college, but with citation style.

And that’s not very cool.

Harvard referencing system may become a real trouble when it’s high time you wrote essay, research paper, or your course work for finals.

All those rules, commas, capitalizations… — they just make your desired A+ more and more unachievable. No wonder tools like Harvard title page generator exist. With their help, getting the desired result is much easier.

We know that Harvard citation: 1) is not loved by students at all in many cases, but 2) crucial for your academic success.

That’s why we’ve designed our guide — a complete and super easy go-to guide with numerous examples of Harvard citations (for more advice and academic help see this website).

Let’s start with general rules.

When citing information sources in Harvard, you need to keep in mind such general rules:

  • your paper should include a title page, outline, and reference list
  • 1” margins are required around a page
  • a running head is not needed
  • two types of citation are to be included (in-text and reference list)
  • all sources are to be mentioned in alphabetical order
  • no indentation is required for the reference list
  • minimalize capitalization
  • minimalize the use of punctuation
  • As a rule, two types of headings are used when formatting a paper in Harvard:
    • Level 1 – centered, capitalized, not bold, not italicized.
    • Level 2 – flush left, italicized, capitalized, not bold.
  • the first paragraph or a couple of paragraphs are usually devoted to the introduction. However, a subtitle is not required.
  • the last paragraph or a couple of paragraphs are to follow a subtitle [Conclusion].
  • the use of transition words and phrases for linking paragraphs is encouraged.

Download Example

Download Example

General Structure:

Reference List

Last Name, Initials Publication Date, Title of book, Publisher, City.

Example:

Williams, C 2010, Management, Cengage Learning, Mason.

In-Text Citation

(Last Name Publication Date, page)

Example:

(Williams 2010, p. 5)

Note: for any cases that are not outlined in the present guide, please follow the general format.

Download Example

Further study