Quick Guide to Harvard

Referencing
What is Referencing?
Referencing is providing information on the sources that
you have
used to complete an assignment.
You need to reference your sources in the text of your
assignment,
this is called an in-text citation, and provide a

reference list
at the end of your assignment. In the Harvard style, this
reference
list should always be in alphabetical order.

What is a Bibliography?
A bibliography includes all the material used in the preparation of your work. It may
therefore include your entire reference list as well as any other material youve read
or used but havent referred to directly. It is written in the same format as your
reference list.
Confusingly, if your department asks you to use Turnitin when you submit your
assignments, you must refer to a reference list as a bibliography as it is the word
bibliography itself that Turnitin recognises and it ignores text after this word when
it checks your work for similarities with other documents and web pages.
Check with your department or the individual tutor marking your work to see if they
require you to include references to material not cited directly in your assignment
(many do not want this but some do).

Harvard Style for HUBS

There is not a single Harvard style. Harvard just means an Author-Date citation
style with an alphabetical reference list. How that list is formatted is dependent on
your departmental preferences. The style given below follows the convention in the
Study Skills Handbook published by the Hull University Business School (full pdf
version available on eBridge).

Referencing an authored book

When writing a book reference, use the order shown below: Author(s) first, followed
by year, title, edition (only if not the first), place and finally publisher. Corporate
authors (i.e BBC) are acceptable where no specific author is given. Lesser-known
American place names can have the two letter state abbreviation after the place
(Sebastapol CA, OReilly Media.) to assist the reader.
Author

Date

Title

Edition (if not

Place published
Publishe
1st)
r
Cottrell, S. (2008), The Study Skills Handbook, 3nd edn, Basingstoke, Palgrave
Macmillan.
Full stop
Comm
Full Bracke Comm
Italics
Comma
a
stop
ts
a
s

Referencing an edited book

If the book is edited, editor(s) followed by the abbreviation ed(s). should appear in
place of Author.
Place published Publishe
Abbreviatio Date
Title
n
r
Healy, M., Pawson, E. and Solem, M., eds. (2012), Active Learning and Student Engagement,
Oxford, Routledge.
Comma Full stop Comma Full stop Bracket
Italics
Comma Full stop
s
s
Editors

Referencing a section or chapter in a book

Some books consist of chapters or sections written by different authors and the
book has an overall editor. Follow the chapter information with In and then the
book information:
Year

Chapter
In: Editor
Book title
Place
Publishe
Page
title
name
published
r
numbers
Law, D. (2006), Doctors and books. In: Baker, D., ed. Student Reading Needs. London,
Library Association: 88-98.
Comm Full Bracket Comm Full stop Comm Italic Full stop Comm
Colo
Full
a
stop
s
a
a
s
a
n
stop
Chapter
Author

Referencing a journal article

For a journal reference, use the order shown below: author(s), year, article title,
journal title, issue information and page numbers. The issue information is usually
the volume number followed by the part number in brackets but may sometimes be
a month or season.
Author(s

Year of
Article title
Journal title
Issue
Page
)
publication
information
numbers
Fox, I. and Zaks, F. (2006), Hedging political risk in India, Harvard Business Review, 85,
(11): 22-25.
Comm
a

Full
stop

Bracke Comm
ts
a

Inverted
commas

Comm Italic Comm Bracke Colo

a
s
as
ts
n

Full
stop

Referencing a web page

First, please note that a website URL is NEVER a suitable reference on its own. You
must give as much of the information below as you can find. Sometimes it is not
possible to identify the author of a webpage, in these cases use a corporate author
if possible (such as Microsoft) or if you cannot find this, the apparent title of the
website is used. Year of publication can often be found by looking at the copyright
information at the bottom of the page, otherwise use (n.d.) to indicate no date.
Author(
s)

Year of
publication

Webpage
Title

Website URL

Date you looked

at it

Reynolds, G. (2005), Top Ten Slide Tips, http://www.garrreynolds.com/presentation/slides.html [Accessed

15 May 2012].

Comm
a

Full
stop

Bracke Comm Italic Comm

ts
a
s
a

Square
brackets

Full
stop

In-text citations
Examples of in-text citations and a reference list for website, book and journal
article:
Nancy Duarte encouraged readers to Learn to think faster, sell better,
and see the invisible by thinking in pictures. (Duarte, 2012).
In-text
citatio
ns

Reynolds (2011) explained that by being ourselves (nerves, warts and

all) presenters are more likely to make a connection with an audience.
All slides should use a full sentence to make an assertion in their title
and give the evidence to back up that assertion in the main body of the
slide. Where possible this evidence should be visual (Alley & Neeley,
2005).
References

Journal article

Website (blog
post)
Book

Alley, M. and Neeley, K. (2005), Rethinking the design of presentation

slides: a case for sentence headlines and visual evidence, Technical
Communication, 52,(4): 417-426.
Duarte, N. (2012), Back of the napkin to head of the class introducing
Dan Roams Napkin Academy, http://blog.duarte.com/page/3/ [Accessed
15 October 2012].
Reynolds, G. (2011), The Naked Presenter; Delivering Powerful
Presentations With or Without Slides, Berkeley CA, New Riders.

Secondary Referencing
Take your information from what you have actually read. If you cant read the
original source, only what another author has written about it, then give a
secondary reference. Remember, you are relying on the author you are reading
giving an accurate representation of the original work this may not always be the
case! (Go back to the original source whenever you can.)
You must be clear in your text that you have not read the original source and are
referring to it from a secondary source. For example, you could say:
A description of education in the 1930s by Ella Ruth Boyce (Santer, Griffiths and
Goodall, 2007 p.8) is very interesting
because....
You HAVE
NOT
You HAVE read
read Ella Ruth
Boyce so you will
NOT cite it in your
reference list

Santer, Griffiths &

Goodall so you
WILL cite it in
your reference list

Santer, J., Griffiths, C. and Goodall, D. (2007), Free Play in Early Childhood: a
Literature Review, London, National Childrens Bureau.

Help with Referencing

If you would like further help with referencing, you can get it from the University of
Hull Skills Team, for more information see http://libguides.hull.ac.uk/skills. You can
also email an enquiry to skills@hull.ac.uk and we will be happy to help you.

The Complete Guide to Referencing and Plagiarism by Colin

Neville is an eBook available to all University of Hull students.
Just look for it in the University Library Catalogue
(http://libguides.hull.c.uk/lib). If you are off campus you will
require your Athens user ID and password.