Which Harvard style this is
Harvard is a family of author-date styles, not one style with an official manual. Rephrasa uses Cite Them Right, through the official CSL file harvard-cite-them-right.csl, which is titled for the 12th edition. The printed book is now in its 13th edition, so we label the style "Cite Them Right 12th ed." to be accurate.
Universities often publish their own Harvard guide with small differences, for example in punctuation after the year or in how access dates are written. Compare the generator's output with your library's guide and adjust the few details your marker cares about.
Harvard reference examples
Ashbourn, J. (2014) Biometrics in the new world: the cloud, mobile technology and pervasive identity. 2nd edn. Springer.
In-text citation: (Ashbourn, 2014)
World Health Organization (2025) Sodium reduction. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/sodium-reduction (Accessed: 24 June 2025).
In-text citation: (World Health Organization, 2025)
Three details set Cite Them Right Harvard apart from APA: the year in parentheses with no full stop after it, the abbreviation "edn." for edition, and "Available at:" plus "(Accessed: date)" for online sources.
Harvard in-text citations
Cite the author and year in parentheses: (Ashbourn, 2014). With a quotation or a specific passage, add the page: (Ashbourn, 2014, p. 52). Two or three authors are all named, joined with "and"; four or more use the first author and "et al.". If you name the author in your sentence, the year follows in parentheses: Ashbourn (2014) argues...
Organisations can be authors, as the WHO example shows. More examples are on the in-text citation generator page.
Formatting the Harvard reference list
- Title the list "Reference list" or "References", as your guide asks.
- Sort alphabetically by author surname, then by year for the same author.
- Use the same British spelling and date order (day month year) as the generator's en-GB locale.
- Italicise the title of the book, journal or website, which the copied text already does.
Build the whole list with the reference generator, or compare with APA if your course allows either style.
Sources for this Harvard style
Examples were recreated from the University of Reading Library's Cite Them Right Harvard examples, checked October 25, 2026. Cite Them Right is published by Bloomsbury; Rephrasa is not affiliated with Bloomsbury or with any university.
Harvard or APA?
Both are author-date styles and look alike in the text. In the list they differ in small, visible ways: APA puts the year in parentheses followed by a full stop, Harvard (Cite Them Right) does not add the full stop; APA writes "(2nd ed.)" after the title, Harvard writes "2nd edn." as its own element; APA drops "Available at:" for web pages, Harvard keeps it with an access date. Pick one and use it for the whole document.
If your module handbook says "Harvard" without naming a version, ask which guide the module follows, or use your library's guide as the reference point.
Secondary referencing in Harvard
When you read about a source in another book and cannot access the original, Cite Them Right asks you to name both in the text, for example "(Smith, 1999, cited in Jones, 2021)", and to list only the source you actually read. The generator formats the list entry; write the "cited in" part yourself.