Harvard referencing is an author-date citation system. In your text you give the author's surname and the year in round brackets, for example (Gulddal, 2020), and at the end you list the full details of every source in a reference list ordered alphabetically by surname. That is the whole idea; the rest is punctuation.

The punctuation is where students lose marks, because there is no single official Harvard manual. This guide follows Cite Them Right, the version that the Reading, Newcastle and UCL library guides are based on, and every example below is copied from a university library guide that publishes it. Where versions disagree, we say so.

What is Harvard referencing?

Harvard is a family of author-date styles rather than one fixed rulebook, and many university libraries publish their own Harvard guide. Each source you use appears twice: once as a short citation inside your sentence, and once as a full entry in the reference list.

The UCL Library guide sums up the in-text part in three items: the author or editor surname, the year of publication, and the page number if needed (UCL Library Services). The reference list then answers a few questions about each source: who made it, what it is called, what larger work it belongs to, who published it and when.

Two parts that must match is the point of Harvard referencing. A reader who sees (Ashbourn, 2014) in your essay should find exactly one entry starting with "Ashbourn, J. (2014)" in your list. If the two halves drift apart, for example a different year or a misspelt surname, the citation stops doing its job, however neat the formatting looks.

Why there is more than one Harvard style

Harvard referencing is a convention, not a trademark, so universities have written their own versions over the years. UCL states it plainly: "there are many variations of the Harvard style", and students should match the version recommended in their course handbook (UCL Library Services). The University of Reading adds that Harvard "is a style rather than a set of rules, so details of punctuation and text formatting may differ" (University of Reading Library).

Compare two real book examples. UCL's guide, based on the 9th edition of Cite Them Right, prints a full stop after the year and keeps the place of publication:

Ronson, J. (2012). The psychopath test: a journey through the madness industry. London: Picador.

Reading, which points students to the 13th edition (2025), drops both:

Ashbourn, J. (2014) Biometrics in the new world: the cloud, mobile technology and pervasive identity. 2nd edn. Springer.

Neither is wrong. They are different editions of the same guide. In our view the fix is simple: find the name of the version in your module handbook, then use it consistently. A tutor will usually forgive a version choice; mixing two versions in one list looks careless.

Which version does Rephrasa use? The Harvard option in our generator is built on the open Cite Them Right 12th edition CSL style, and we label it that way. Cite Them Right Online is the publisher's own reference site if your university gives you access.

Diagram comparing two Harvard book references: Ronson (2012) from the UCL guide based on Cite Them Right 9th edition, with a full stop after the year and London as place, and Ashbourn (2014) from the Reading guide pointing to the 13th edition, without either
The two book examples above, with the two differences marked in red. Both follow Cite Them Right; they come from different editions. Diagram by Rephrasa, examples from UCL Library Services and the University of Reading Library.

Harvard in-text citations

In Harvard referencing, an in-text citation can sit in brackets at the end of a clause (parenthetical) or use the author's name as part of your sentence (narrative). Newcastle University's 2025 Cite Them Right style sheet shows both forms (Newcastle University Library):

  • Parenthetical: Recent research (Jones and Henry, 2011, p. 1150) shows...
  • Narrative: Evans (2015, p. 33) explains that...

Notice the comma between surname and year, which APA also uses, and the word "and" between two authors where APA uses "&" inside brackets.

Page numbers

UCL is firm here: "A direct quotation, or allusion, should always include the page number(s)" (UCL Library Services). For sources without pages, use whatever locator you have. Reading's e-book example cites a Kindle percentage, (Prior, 2020, 74%), and its YouTube example uses a time code, (TEDx Talks, 2018, 2:34) (University of Reading Library).

One, two, three or more authors

AuthorsHarvard (Cite Them Right) in-text
One(Gulddal, 2020)
Two(Thomas and Tian, 2021)
Three(Adeyeye, Ashaolu and Idowu-Adebayo, 2022)
Four or more(Moise et al., 2020)
Organisation as author(World Health Organization, 2025)
No date(Action on Salt, no date)

All six examples come from the Reading guide (University of Reading Library).

Same author and year, and secondary sources

Two works by the same author in the same year get a lower-case letter after the year, such as (Smith, 2001b, p.20), with the letters assigned by alphabetising the titles in the reference list (Newcastle University Library).

If you only read a source quoted inside another book, say so with "quoted in" or "cited in": Smith (2018, quoted in Jones, 2020, p. 21). Only the source you actually read goes in your reference list. Both guides recommend tracking down the original first, and we agree: secondary citations are a common place for a quotation to be taken out of context.

How to format a Harvard reference list

The reference list sits at the end of your work, arranged alphabetically by the surname of the first author (Newcastle University Library). A reference list holds what you cited; a bibliography in the Cite Them Right sense also includes what you read but did not cite. Check which one your assignment asks for.

The templates and examples below are from the Reading and Newcastle guides, which follow Cite Them Right.

Book

Template: Surname, Initial. (Year) Title. Edition (if not the first). Publisher.

Ashbourn, J. (2014) Biometrics in the new world: the cloud, mobile technology and pervasive identity. 2nd edn. Springer.

Have the ISBN? The ISBN citation generator fills in the title, publisher and year for you.

Journal article

Template: Surname, Initial. (Year) 'Title of article', Title of Journal, volume(issue), page range. Available at: DOI.

Gulddal, J. (2020) 'That deep underground savage instinct: narratives of sacrifice and retribution in Agatha Christie's Appointment with Death', Textual Practice, 34(11), pp. 1803-1821. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2019.1639915.

Reading's advice is useful: if you only have a bare DOI, turn it into a link by adding https://doi.org/ in front (University of Reading Library). Paste the DOI into our DOI to citation tool and it does this for you.

Diagram of the Gulddal (2020) Harvard journal reference split into rows: author, year without a full stop, article title in single quotation marks, journal in italics, volume and issue, pages with pp., and Available at with the DOI link
The Gulddal journal example above, one element per row, so you can match each part to the template. The article title is shortened. Diagram by Rephrasa, example from the University of Reading Library guide.

Chapter in an edited book

Isenhour, C. (2015) 'Sustainable consumption and its discontents', in H. Kopnina and E. Shoreman-Ouimet (eds.) Sustainability: key issues. Routledge, pp. 133-154.

Note that the editors' initials come before their surnames, the reverse of the author.

Website

Template: Author (Year published or last updated) Title of web page. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

World Health Organization (2025) Sodium reduction. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/sodium-reduction (Accessed: 24 June 2025).

The accessed date is the day you viewed the page. If the page shows no date, write (no date) where the year would be. More website cases are on our guide to citing a website.

YouTube video

Template: Person or organisation posting the video (Year posted) Title. Date uploaded. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

TEDx Talks (2018) The power of an entrepreneurial mindset: Bill Roche. 20 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihs4VFZWwn4 (Accessed: 5 July 2025).

The "author" is the channel that posted the video, not necessarily the speaker (University of Reading Library).

Et al. rules in Harvard referencing

Et al. means "and others". In the text of an essay using Harvard referencing, Cite Them Right is consistent: name up to three authors, and use the first author plus et al. for four or more, as in Harrison et al. (2003) (Newcastle University Library).

Diagram of Harvard et al. rules: in the text, up to three authors named and et al. from four authors; in the reference list, Newcastle and Reading list all authors while the CSL 12th edition style used by Rephrasa shortens four or more
The rule in two places. The red box is the limitation of our own generator described below. Diagram by Rephrasa, based on the Newcastle University and University of Reading library guides.

The reference list is where versions differ, and this is the rule students most often get wrong:

  • Newcastle's 2025 style sheet: "you need to record all authors in your final reference list or bibliography. You can only use et al. if there are more than 10 authors" (Newcastle University Library).
  • Reading: include all authors in the full reference, and use et al. only in the in-text citation (University of Reading Library).

Be aware of one limitation in our own tool. The Cite Them Right 12th edition CSL style that powers Rephrasa's Harvard option shortens four or more authors to "first author et al." in the reference list too. If your university follows the newer guidance above, add the remaining names after you paste the reference. We would rather tell you than let a generator quietly cost you marks.

Screenshot of the Rephrasa Harvard referencing generator with the Cite Them Right 12th edition entry Grady, J.S. et al. (2019) Emotions in storybooks, Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), pp. 207-217, and the in-text citation (Grady et al., 2019)
The limitation in practice: for DOI 10.1037/ppm0000185, a five-author article, the generator writes "Grady, J.S. et al." in the reference list. Under the Newcastle and Reading guidance, replace it with all five names: Grady, Her, Moreno, Perez and Yelinek. Screenshot of the Rephrasa Harvard referencing generator, October 30, 2026.

Harvard vs APA: the differences that matter

Harvard referencing and APA 7 are both author-date systems, so they look alike at a glance. The details differ in ways a marker will notice. The APA column below is taken from the official APA Style pages (APA Style: author-date citation system; APA Style: elements of reference list entries).

PointHarvard (Cite Them Right)APA 7
Two authors in brackets(Thomas and Tian, 2021)(Salas & D'Agostino, 2020)
Et al. in the textFour or more authorsThree or more authors, even in the first citation
Authors in the reference listAll authors (Newcastle and Reading guides)Up to and including 20 authors
Year in the reference(2020) with no full stop after it(2019). with a full stop
Article titleIn single quotation marksNo quotation marks, no italics, sentence case
Online sources"Available at:" plus URL and (Accessed: date)DOI or URL; a retrieval date only for unarchived pages designed to change

If you were taught APA at school and now face Harvard at university, the accessed date and the single quotation marks are the two habits to change first. For the APA side in full, read our APA format guide, and for a side-by-side look at in-text styles see how in-text citations work across styles.

Common Harvard referencing mistakes

From the examples above, these are the Harvard referencing slips that are easiest to make and easiest to fix:

  1. Mixing versions. A full stop after the year in some entries and not in others. Pick one version and apply it to the whole list.
  2. Missing page numbers for quotations. Every direct quote needs a page, percentage or time code.
  3. Citing what you did not read. If you saw a source only inside another book, use "cited in" and list the book you read.
  4. Forgetting the accessed date for websites and videos.
  5. Using et al. too early. Three authors are all named in Cite Them Right; et al. starts at four.
  6. Treating paraphrased text as your own. Rewording a source in your own words still needs a citation. Our guide on how to paraphrase properly covers this.

Using a Harvard referencing generator well

A generator saves time on the fiddly part of Harvard referencing: capitalisation, italics and the order of elements. The Rephrasa Harvard referencing generator takes a DOI, URL or ISBN, looks up the details in your browser, and lets you correct each field before the reference is added. You can then copy the list or export it.

A generator is only as good as the metadata it finds, though. Websites often publish no author or a wrong date, and book records can list the wrong edition. Before you paste, check the author names, the year, the edition and the accessed date against the source itself. Two minutes of checking beats losing marks for a reference that looks perfect but points to the wrong thing.

Need another style for a different module? The same tool covers APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE and AMA on the main citation generator, and there is a dedicated APA citation generator too.