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Harvard Citation Style: All Examples

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In-text citations

Two or more works cited at one point in the text

If two or more works by different authors or authoring bodies are cited at one point in the text, use a semi-colon to separate them:

(Larsen 2000; Malinowski 1999)

The authors should be listed in alphabetical order.

Two or three authors or authoring bodies

When citing a work by two or three authors or authoring bodies, cite the names in the order in which they appear on the title page:

(Malinowski, Miller & Gupta 1995) 

In-Text & Reference List Examples

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• Referencing and plagiarism

Quick guide to Harvard referencing (Cite Them Right)

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There are different versions of the Harvard referencing style. This guide is a quick introduction to the commonly-used Cite Them Right version. You will find further guidance available through the OU Library on the Cite Them Right Database .

For help and support with referencing and the full Cite Them Right guide, have a look at the Library’s page on referencing and plagiarism . If you need guidance referencing OU module material you can check out which sections of Cite Them Right are recommended when referencing physical and online module material .

This guide does not apply to OU Law undergraduate students . If you are studying a module beginning with W1xx, W2xx or W3xx, you should refer to the Quick guide to Cite Them Right referencing for Law modules .

Table of contents

In-text citations and full references.

• Secondary referencing
• Page numbers
• Citing multiple sources published in the same year by the same author

Full reference examples

Referencing consists of two elements:

• in-text citations, which are inserted in the body of your text and are included in the word count. An in-text citation gives the author(s) and publication date of a source you are referring to. If the publication date is not given, the phrase 'no date' is used instead of a date. If using direct quotations or you refer to a specific section in the source you also need the page number/s if available, or paragraph number for web pages.
• full references, which are given in alphabetical order in a  reference list at the end of your work and are not included in the word count. Full references give full bibliographical information for all the sources you have referred to in the body of your text.

To see a reference list and intext citations check out this example assignment on Cite Them Right .

Difference between reference list and bibliography

a reference list only includes sources you have referred to in the body of your text.

a bibliography includes sources you have referred to in the body of your text AND sources that were part of your background reading that you did not use in your assignment.

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Examples of in-text citations

You need to include an in-text citation wherever you quote or paraphrase from a source. An in-text citation consists of the last name of the author(s), the year of publication, and a page number if relevant. There are a number of ways of incorporating in-text citations into your work - some examples are provided below. Alternatively you can see examples of setting out in-text citations in Cite Them Right .

Example with one author:

Almeroth-Williams, T. (2019) City of Beasts: How Animals Shaped Georgian London . Manchester: Manchester University Press.

RSPCA (2024) Caring for cats and kittens . Available at: https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/pets/cats (Accessed: 1 August 2024).

Example with two or three authors:

Grayling, A. and Ball, B. (2024) ' Philosophy is crucial in the age of AI', The Conversation , 1 August. Available at: https://theconversation.com/philosophy-is-crucial-in-the-age-of-ai-235907 (Accessed: 1 August 2024).

Chu, M., Leonard, P. and Stevenson, F. (2012) ' Growing the Base for Citizen Science: Recruiting and Engaging Participants', in J.L. Dickinson and R. Bonney (eds.) Citizen Science: Public Participation in Environmental Research . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 69-81.

Example with four or more authors:

Young, H.D. et al. (2015) Sears and Zemansky's university physics . San Francisco, CA: Addison-Wesley.

Note: You can choose one or other method to reference four or more authors (unless your School requires you to name all authors in your reference list) and your approach should be consistent.

Online module materials

(Includes written online module activities, audio-visual material such as online tutorials, recordings or videos).

When referencing material from module websites, the date of publication is the year you started studying the module.

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication/presentation) 'Title of item'. Module code: Module title . Available at: URL of VLE (Accessed: date).

OR, if there is no named author:

The Open University (Year of publication/presentation) 'Title of item'. Module code: Module title . Available at: URL of VLE (Accessed: date).

Rietdorf, K. and Bootman, M. (2022) 'Topic 3: Rare diseases'. S290: Investigating human health and disease . Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=1967195 (Accessed: 24 January 2023).

The Open University (2022) ‘3.1 The purposes of childhood and youth research’. EK313: Issues in research with children and young people . Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=1949633&section=1.3 (Accessed: 24 January 2023).

You can also use this template to reference videos and audio that are hosted on your module website:

The Open University (2022) ‘Video 2.7 An example of a Frith-Happé animation’. SK298: Brain, mind and mental health . Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2013014&section=4.9.6 (Accessed: 22 November 2022).

The Open University (2022) ‘Audio 2 Interview with Richard Sorabji (Part 2)’. A113: Revolutions . Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=1960941&section=5.6 (Accessed: 22 November 2022).

Note: if a complete journal article has been uploaded to a module website, or if you have seen an article referred to on the website and then accessed the original version, reference the original journal article, and do not mention the module materials. If only an extract from an article is included in your module materials that you want to reference, you should use secondary referencing, with the module materials as the 'cited in' source, as described above.

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) 'Title of message', Title of discussion board , in Module code: Module title . Available at: URL of VLE (Accessed: date).

Fitzpatrick, M. (2022) ‘A215 - presentation of TMAs', Tutor group discussion & Workbook activities , in A215: Creative writing . Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=4209566 (Accessed: 24 January 2022).

Note: When an ebook looks like a printed book, with publication details and pagination, reference as a printed book.

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) Title . Edition if later than first. Place of publication: publisher. Series and volume number if relevant.

For ebooks that do not contain print publication details

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) Title of book . Available at: DOI or URL (Accessed: date).

Bell, J. (2014) Doing your research project . Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Adams, D. (1979) The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy . Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-ebooks (Accessed: 23 June 2021).

Note: Books that have an editor, or editors, where each chapter is written by a different author or authors.

Surname of chapter author, Initial. (Year of publication) 'Title of chapter or section', in Initial. Surname of book editor (ed.) Title of book . Place of publication: publisher, Page reference.

Franklin, A.W. (2012) 'Management of the problem', in S.M. Smith (ed.) The maltreatment of children . Lancaster: MTP, pp. 83–95.

Note: When referencing a chapter of an edited book, your in-text citation should give the author(s) of the chapter.

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) 'Title of article', Title of Journal , volume number (issue number), page reference.

If accessed online:

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) 'Title of article', Title of Journal , volume number (issue number), page reference. Available at: DOI or URL (if required) (Accessed: date).

Shirazi, T. (2010) 'Successful teaching placements in secondary schools: achieving QTS practical handbooks', European Journal of Teacher Education , 33(3), pp. 323–326.

Shirazi, T. (2010) 'Successful teaching placements in secondary schools: achieving QTS practical handbooks', European Journal of Teacher Education , 33(3), pp. 323–326. Available at: https://libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/log... (Accessed: 27 January 2023).

Barke, M. and Mowl, G. (2016) 'Málaga – a failed resort of the early twentieth century?', Journal of Tourism History , 2(3), pp. 187–212. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1755182X.2010.523145

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) 'Title of article', Title of Newspaper , Day and month, Page reference.

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) 'Title of article', Title of Newspaper , Day and month, Page reference if available. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

Mansell, W. and Bloom, A. (2012) ‘£10,000 carrot to tempt physics experts’, The Guardian , 20 June, p. 5.

Roberts, D. and Ackerman, S. (2013) 'US draft resolution allows Obama 90 days for military action against Syria', The Guardian , 4 September. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/04/syria-strikes-draft-resolut... (Accessed: 9 September 2015).

Surname, Initial. (Year that the site was published/last updated) Title of web page . Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

Organisation (Year that the page was last updated) Title of web page . Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

Robinson, J. (2007) Social variation across the UK . Available at: https://www.bl.uk/british-accents-and-dialects/articles/social-variation... (Accessed: 21 November 2021).

The British Psychological Society (2018) Code of Ethics and Conduct . Available at: https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/bps-code-ethics-and-conduct (Accessed: 22 March 2019).

Note: Cite Them Right Online offers guidance for referencing webpages that do not include authors' names and dates. However, be extra vigilant about the suitability of such webpages.

Surname, Initial. (Year) Title of photograph . Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

Kitton, J. (2013) Golden sunset . Available at: https://www.jameskittophotography.co.uk/photo_8692150.html (Accessed: 21 November 2021).

stanitsa_dance (2021) Cossack dance ensemble . Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/COI_slphWJ_/ (Accessed: 13 June 2023).

Note: If no title can be found then replace it with a short description.

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Home / Guides / Citation Guides / Harvard Referencing / Harvard Referencing Style Examples

Harvard Referencing Style Examples

What is harvard referencing style.

Citing the work of others helps to make your work more impactful. It could be direct quotes , paraphrases of someone else’s ideas, statistical figures, or summaries of main points. There are different methods for crediting resources; Harvard referencing style (or Harvard style for short) is one such method.  

Harvard style follows the author-date system and includes two types of citations:

• in-text citations  
• references  

In-text citations

In-text citations  are included within the text of the main document. They are placed next to the information you are referencing, so the reader is clear on what information came from another source.

In-text citation example:

(Bloom, 2005) or Bloom (2005) wrote…

Every in-text citation has a corresponding reference in a reference list. A reference includes additional details about each source referenced. This enables the reader to refer to the original source, should they need to.  

The reference list is a detailed list of all the works consulted while writing. It is placed at the end of the document.  

Reference example for the above in-text citation:

Author Surname, Initials. (Publication Year) Title of the text in italics. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Bloom, H. (2005) Novelists and novels . Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers.

Below are Harvard referencing examples of in-text citations and reference list entries for the different kinds of sources that you might use.  

In-text citation structure and example:  

(Author Surname, Publication Year)

(Ozeki, 2013)  

Reference structure and example:  

Author Surname, Initials. (Publication Year) Title. Place of Publication: Publisher.  

Ozeki, R. (2013) A tale for the time being . New York: Penguin Books.  

Book with two or three authors

For books with two or three authors, the names of all the authors are given in both the in-text citation and the reference entry.  

(1 st Author Surname and 2 nd Author Surname, Publication Year)  

(Lodge and Wood, 2000)

1 st Author Surname, Initials. and 2 nd Author Surname, Initials. (Publication Year) Title of the text in italics. Place of Publication: Publisher.  

Lodge, D. and Wood, N. (2000) Modern criticism and theory: a reader. 2nd edn. Harlow: Longman.  

Book with four or more authors

If the number of authors is four or more, only the first author’s name is used followed by ‘et al.’ , italicised, which is Latin for ‘and others’.

(1 st Author Surname et al., Publication Year)

(Akmajian et al. , 2014)

Reference structure and example:

1 st Author Surname, Initials. e t al. (Publication Year) Title of the text in italics. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Akmajian, A. et al. (2014) Linguistics: an introduction to language and communication . 6th edn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Book with translator  

For books with a translator, only the author’s name is included in the in-text reference.   The translator is given in the reference list entry, along with the language from which it was translated. This comes right after the title.

(Dostoevsky, 1993)

Author Surname, Initials. (Publication Year) Title of the text in italics. Translated from the Language by Translator Initials. Surname. Place of Publication: Publisher.  

Dostoevsky, F. (1993) Crime and punishment . Translated from the Russian by R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky. London: Vintage.  

Journal articles

Journal articles are highly credible sources of information. The example below was authored by more than three individuals, so the term ‘ et al. ’ is used in lieu of listing all authors.

In-text citation structure and example:

(Lomolino et al., 2020)

Journal reference list entries often have extra information, such as article title, volume, issue number, page numbers, or a specific date.

With journals, the volume number follows the title. If there are any specific parts of the issue, numbered or organized according to months, these details are mentioned alongside in brackets.  

Author Surname, Initials. (Publication Year) ‘Article title’, Journal Name , Volume(Issue), Page(s). Available at: URL or DOI (Accessed: date).  

Lomolino, M. et al. (2013) ‘Of mice and mammoths: generality and antiquity of the island rule’, Journal of Biogeography , 40(8), pp. 1427-1439. Available at: https://www.jstor/org/stable/23463664 (Accessed: 10 September 2020).

Newspaper or magazine

(Ingle, 2020)

Author Surname, Initials. (Publication Year) ‘Article title’, Newspaper/Magazine Name , Day Month Published, Page(s). Available at: URL or DOI (Accessed: date).  

Ingle, S. (2020) ‘Geraint Thomas insists he has nothing to prove at road world championships’, The Guardian, 24 September. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/sprot/2020/sep/24/geraint-thomas-insists-he-has-nothing-to-prove-at-road-world-championships-cycling (Accessed: 11 October 2020).

  For online articles, you should always include the URL and date of access.

Social media and other online sources

(Author/Poster Name, Publication Year)

(Cramer, 2020)

References for social media posts have a similar format to online articles. However, sometimes they don’t have a true ‘title’. For example, for Twitter posts, the full text of the tweet is used as the title, unless the tweet is overly long.

Author/Poster Surname, Initial(s). [@Handle] (Publication year) Content of Post [Social Media Site] Day Month Published. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).

Cramer, K. [@SenKevinCramer] (2020) Supreme Court vacancies are an important issue to the people I serve [Twitter] 24 September. Available at: https://twitter.com/SenKevinCramer/status/1308915548244398081 (Accessed: 25 September 2020).

The format for citing social media is different than the format for citing regular websites and web pages. This guide on how to cite a website in Harvard style provides details on how to cite web content that is not posted on social media.

(Image Creator or Photographer Surname, Publication Year)

(Pinneo, 2020)

Print reference structure:  

Author, Initial(s). (Year) Title of the Image [Photograph]. Place of Publication: Publisher (if available).

Online reference structure and example:

If the image is on the Internet, then the place of publication and the publisher name are replaced by the image URL and access date.

Author, Initial(s). (Year) Title of the Image .   Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).  

Pinneo, B.J. (2020) Dusty dreams . Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/2020/09/dusty-dreams/ (Accessed: 23 September 2020).

In-text reference structure and example:  

(Film Title , Year Released )

( Pride & Prejudice , 2005)

For films, the title of the film is used in place of the author name.  

Title of the Film (Year Released) Directed by Director Initial. Surname. Available at: Name of Streaming Service (Accessed: Day Month Year).  

Pride & Prejudice (2005) Directed by J. Wright. UK: Universal Pictures. Available at: Netflix (Accessed: 29 September 2020).

Published October 29, 2020.

Harvard Formatting Guide

Harvard Formatting

• et al Usage
• Direct Quotes
• In-text Citations
• Multiple Authors
• Page Numbers
• Writing an Outline
• View Harvard Guide

Reference Examples

• View all Harvard Examples

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Harvard Referencing Examples

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Harvard referencing quick guide: Sample assignment

• Introduction
• General guidelines
• Citing and referencing material

Sample assignment

• Referencing software

Citing and reference list example

The text to the right shows how citations and the reference list are typically written in the Harvard referencing style.

Note: the text itself is not designed to be a proper example of academic writing and does not use information from the sources cited; it is for illustrative purposes only.

The purpose of this assignment is to show common elements of the Harvard style of referencing in Dundalk Institute of Technology. It is not intended to be an example of good quality academic writing, and indeed may not make sense in general, but it should show you how citations and a reference list are formed in the Harvard style of referencing (Cameron 2021). If you include a “direct quotation from a book you have read” (Giddens and Sutton 2021, p.117) you should include the relevant page number.

You don’t always have to write the author and year in brackets. Cameron (2021) explains that if the author’s name occurs naturally in the text then the year follows it in brackets. If there are two authors you should include both of them in the citation (Levine and Munsch 2021). If there are three or more authors you don’t have to list all of the names in the citation but you should include them all in the reference list (Robbins et al. 2020). The reference list should appear at the end of your assignment and be in alphabetical order based on the first author’s surname (Bruen 2022) rather than the order in which they appear in your assignment ( Papagiannis  2022). If you are using a citation for a second time you do not need to include it twice in the reference list (Cameron 2021).

Referencing an academic journal that you find online requires more information in the reference list but uses the same format for citing as other sources (Tesseur 2022). If referencing a source from a library database you say from which database you found it (Mayombe 2021).

Don’t forget that websites need to be cited too (Dundalk Institute of Technology 2022). We recommend you look at the full version of DkIT’s Harvard referencing guidelines, and contact the Library if you have any questions. Good luck.

Reference list

Bruen, M. (2020). River flows. In: Kelly-Quinn, M. and Reynolds, J., eds.  Ireland’s rivers . Dublin: University College Dublin Press, pp.39-59.

Cameron, S. (2021). The business student's handbook: skills for study and employment . 7th ed. Harlow: Pearson.

Dundalk Institute of Technology. (2022).  Research support  [online]. Available from: https://www.dkit.ie/research/research-support.html [accessed 25 March 2022].

Giddens, A. and Sutton, P.W. (2021).  Sociology . 9th ed. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Levine, L.E. and Munsch, J. (2021).  Child development: an active learning approach  [online]. 4th ed. London: SAGE Publications. Available from: https://books.google.ie/books?id=zlrZzQEACAAJ&dq [accessed 25 March 2022].

Mayombe, C. (2021). Partnership with stakeholders as innovative model of work-integrated learning for unemployed youths.  Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning  [online], 12(2), pp.309-327. Available from: Emerald Insight [accessed 25 March 2022].

Papagiannis, N. (2020).  Effective SEO and content marketing: the ultimate guide for maximizing free web traffic  [online]. Indianapolis: Wiley. Available from: EBSCOhost eBook Collection [accessed 25 March 2022].

Robbins, S.P., Coulter, M.A. and De Cenzo, D.A. (2020).  Fundamentals of management . 11th ed. Harlow: Pearson.

Tesseur, W. (2022). Translation as inclusion? An analysis of international NGOs’ translation policy documents.  Language Problems and Language Planning  [online], 45(3), pp. 261-283. Available from: https://doras.dcu.ie/26151 [accessed 25 March 2022].

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Harvard Style Citation and Referencing: a Detailed Guide from Experts

Defining What is Harvard Citation Style and Referencing

From the first time we put our pen on paper, we're taught how important it is to give credit where it's needed. Whether a research paper outline or a doctoral dissertation, proper references, and citations are the foundation of academic work in any field. And when it's time to cite sources, there's one style that stands out: Harvard style. In this article, we will explore the nuances of Harvard style citations and help you navigate the complexity of this important academic tool.

Developed by the Harvard Graduate School for Education, the Harvard style citation is a Ferrari of citations designed for the ultimate advantage of your research. Harvard Style, like a sports car, is streamlined, precise, and designed for speed. From its inception at Harvard at the beginning 20th century, this style has become a standard of academic reference and has been praised for its clarity and sophistication.

Intended to be simple and accessible to all, the Harvard style quickly became popular in the mid-20s and is based upon using the date-author citation in the document text, together with the detailed list of references at the document's end. Nowadays that it has gained universal acknowledgment, Harvard referencing is a critical instrument for scientists in multiple disciplines, owing to its simple yet tasteful design that has endured for many years.

Importance of Using Harvard Style Citation Properly

Using Harvard style citations and references correctly is like putting a hidden weapon in the arsenal of your academics. It'll be more than just following rules; it'll be about proving your credibility and that your work is grounded in solid evidence and reliable sources. Therefore, proper citations and references are crucial for a wide range of purposes:

• First, by acknowledging your sources, you avoid plagiarism and demonstrate that you've taken the necessary precautions and are not attempting to pass on someone else's work as yours.
• Secondly, Harvard citation style and references allow readers to track their sources and verify their assertions. This is especially relevant in fields in which precision and accuracy are important, e.g., in the fields of science and technology.
• Thirdly, using Harvard style citations and references shows you belong to a larger academic community and know their standards and norms. By conforming to the customary citation and referencing guidelines, you can communicate that you are a reliable and trustworthy scholar who values their work.

Before finding out more of the important details about the Harvard referencing style, you might want to delegate your ' Do My Math Homework ' request to our experts!

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Key Features of Harvard Style Citation and Referencing

Below are a few of the principal characteristics of Harvard Style that make it such a popular choice among scholars:

How to Use Harvard Style Citation and Referencing

As was already established, references and citations in the Harvard style are commonly accepted. Therefore, you should take the required actions to ensure accurate citation. Let's adhere to these basic guidelines to give credit where credit is due:

Harvard Style Guidelines include:

• Use a standard font such as Times New Roman or Arial in size 12.
• Set margins to 1 inch on all sides.
• Use double spacing throughout the document, including the reference list.
• Place a header on each page, which should include the title of your paper and the page number, located in the top right-hand corner.
• Make sure to include a title page with your paper title, your name, the name of your institution, and the date of submission. Or you can always find out more on how to title an essay from our expert writers!
• Use headings as a way to organize and simplify your paper with bold or italic letters.
• Include in-text citations
• Include a reference list at the end of your paper.

By selecting the button below, you may get a template from our research paper writing services that includes a sample of an essay cover page, headers, subheadings, and a reference list.

How to Reference Sources Without an Anchor on Date

In Harvard referencing, if you're citing a source without an explicit date, you can still provide as much information as possible to identify the source and omit the date. Here's how you could format it:

Author(s) Last name, Initials. (Year, if available). Title of the work. Publisher. (if applicable) URL or DOI (if available).

For example, let's say you're citing a web page authored by John Smith, but there's no publication date available:

Smith, J. (n.d.). Title of the Web Page. Retrieved from http://www.example-website.com

In this example, "n.d." stands for "no date." This indicates to your reader that the publication date is unknown. It's important to include as much information as possible to help your readers locate the source themselves. If you're citing a printed source with no date, you can simply omit the date and provide the rest of the information as usual.

Common Errors and Pitfalls in Using Harvard Style

While the Harvard Style citation may seem straightforward, there are several common errors and pitfalls that students and researchers should be aware of to ensure they are using the style correctly.

One common error is forgetting to include page numbers when referencing a source. Harvard style requires that page numbers be included when citing a direct quote or paraphrasing from a source. Failing to include page numbers can make it difficult for readers to locate the information being cited and can result in lost points on an assignment or paper.

Another pitfall is the improper formatting of references. Harvard style requires specific formatting for different types of sources, such as italicizing book titles and using quotation marks for article titles. Failure to follow these guidelines can result in a loss of points and confusion for readers.

Another common mistake is inconsistency in formatting and citation styles. It is important to use the same style throughout a document, including in-text citations and the reference list. Mixing different styles can make the document difficult to read and may result in a lower grade. And, if this problem sounds familiar and you wish 'if only somebody could rewrite my essay ,' get our essay writing help in a flash!

Finally, another pitfall to avoid is relying too heavily on online Harvard referencing generator tools. They can be useful for creating references, although they are not always reliable and might not adhere to the exact rules of Harvard style. To guarantee that the references produced by these tools are accurate and in the right format, it is crucial to carefully review and adjust them.

Meanwhile, if you're not really feeling like dealing with the nitty-gritty of referencing your character analysis essay using Harvard style, no sweat! We've got your back on that one too.

Key Takeaways

In conclusion, knowing what is Harvard citation style and how to properly cite sources using this style is an essential ability for any student or researcher writing academically. The main lesson to be learned is that accurate citation not only shows academic honesty but also strengthens the authority of your work and backs up your claims. You may make sure that your writing is correctly referenced, structured, and accepted in the academic world by including these important lessons in it.

And if you feel like you need extra help, our expert paper writing services will provide you with a high-quality Harvard style citation example paper that demonstrates correct citation and formatting, giving you the knowledge and confidence to cite sources effectively in your own work!

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How Do You Format a Citation in Harvard Style?

What is harvard citation and example, is harvard citation mla or apa, how to cite a source with multiple authors in harvard style.

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Harvard referencing sample paper

Published March 8, 2021. Updated August 15, 2021.

Formatting notes for the entire paper

Make sure that the same line spacing, margins, font type, and font size are applied to all pages in your paper. This helps keep your paper’s appearance consistent and professional.

Since Harvard referencing is a style that varies across institutions, make sure that you always check with your instructor about their formatting preferences. If no guidance is provided, here are some basic directions to follow:

• Page margins: 5 cm margins on the left, right, top, and bottom.
• Font type and size: Use a clear and readable font, like Times New Roman or Arial, in 12 pt. font.
• Line spacing:  Double-spaced.
• Running head: In the top right corner of every page, include a shortened version of your title and the page number. Use the “header” area of your document to create your running head.

For help writing your essay, research paper , or other project, check out these writing tips .

Cover page formatting

If you’re required to include a cover page, you will include the following information in this order:

• Running head: Place this in the top right corner. It includes a shortened version of your paper title. The page number is to the right of it.
• Full title of the paper: This goes about halfway down the page. The title should be in all caps.
• Your full name: Place on the line after your title.
• Class name: Place this about 4-5 lines after your full name. Include the class number, if available.
• Your instructor’s name: Place this after the class name. Look at your syllabus to see how they prefer to be presented. It could or could not include their title (“professor”) or degree (e.g., Ph.D., M.A., etc.).
• Institution name : Place this after the instructor’s name.
• Paper due date : Write your date out in full.

Body of the paper formatting

As you begin writing the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion of your Harvard referencing paper, these are formatting tips to keep in mind.

• Page headings : Center a page title. Do not bold, italicize, or underline it.
• Body: Left-aligned.
• Paragraphs: Indent the first line using the tab key.
• In-text citations:  Include these citations immediately after the quoted or paraphrased material. For more information, visit this page on Harvard in-text citations .

Reference list

The reference list includes detailed information about every source you cited in your paper (via an in-text citation). A  reference list appears at the end of your paper on its own page. If you’re citing sources, the Chegg Writing Harvard referencing generator is a helpful resource.

Reference list entries

Your citations will appear in alphabetical order, based on the first letter included in each entry. Each of your sources will be cited differently, depending on many factors. Here are a few guides to help you learn more:

• How to cite a book
• How to cite a website
• How to cite an article
• How to cite an image
• How to cite a PDF
• How to cite a YouTube video
• How to cite a film or movie
• How to cite items with no author
• How to cite items with more than one author

Reference list page formatting

When formatting your reference list, first make sure to check with your particular institution’s style guide. Here are some general formatting guidelines:

• Start your reference list at the very end of your paper and on a new page.
• The page’s title, “Reference list,” will appear centered at the top of the page.
• Organize your references in alphabetical order, using the first letters of each reference.
• If you have more than one source by the same author, they should be listed chronologically by year of publication.
• Each reference is single-spaced and is flush with the left margin (no hanging indents).
• There should be a line between each reference.
• All authors should be listed in the reference.

Sample Harvard referencing style paper

Below are images of a Harvard referencing sample paper. Click here to see the full paper .

Harvard Referencing Style Guides

Harvard Referencing : Citing Sources | Direct Quotes | Et al. | In-text citations | Multiple authors | No authors | Page numbers

Harvard Referencing Generator : Article | Book | Image | Interview | Journal | Movie | PDF | Textbook | Website | YouTube

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Citing references

• Introduction
• Using quotes & paraphrases
• Writing citations

The top five: 1. Book

The top 5: 2. journal article, the top five: 3. chapter in an edited collection, the top five: 4. website, the top five: 5. secondary referencing, archival material, company databases, conference papers, figures (such as charts, diagrams and graphs), generative ai outputs, government or corporate body publication/report, legal and parliamentary documents, literary texts, market research report, newspaper articles, personal communications.

• Radio programme

Sacred texts

Social media, teaching materials (posted on blackboard), technical standards e.g. british standards, youtube videos.

• Compiling a reference list or bibliography
• Different styles & systems of referencing
• Which style does your School/Department use?
• Avoiding unintentional plagiarism
• Using Turnitin to develop your referencing
• Managing your references
• Getting help

Example not here? Try this guide

Citation examples

This page lists the details you will need to include when writing citations for various types of source material. The examples given are in the 'Cite Them Right' version of the Harvard style.

For each example:

• Reference list  refers to the way it would be cited in your reference list or bibliography when using the 'Cite Them Right' Harvard style.
• In-text citation  refers to the way that a work would be cited either in the body of the text or in footnotes when using 'Cite Them Right' Harvard style.
• Referencing styles in use in the University Find out which style your Department uses. Please consult your course handbook for definitive guidance on which style to use.
• Styles of referencing Overview of different referencing styles in use at the University.

Note that, whatever the type of source, the title of the containing volume (i.e. the book, journal, collection etc) should always be marked out, usually by being put in italics but sometimes underlined. Whichever you use, be consistent and use the same formatting throughout your citations.

If the source you want to cite is not listed here consult the following book:

Alternatively ask your Academic Liaison Librarian or a Study Adviser for guidance:

• Contact your Academic Liaison Librarian
• Make an appointment with a Study Adviser

Elements to include:

• Authors or Editors
• Year of publication (in round brackets)
• Title (in italics)
• Edition (if applicable)
• Place published
• Series and volume number (if applicable)

Authored book:

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

In-text citation:   (Ashbourn, 2014)

Edited book:

Reference list: Nasta, S. and Stein, M.U. (eds) (2020)  The Cambridge history of Black and Asian British writing . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

In-text citation:   (Nasta and Stein, 2020)

Where an e-book looks like a printed book (usually PDFs) with publication information and page numbers - cite it in the same way as a printed book (above). Where specific pagination details are not available use the information you have e.g. %, loc, chapter/page/paragraph. Also add the DOI or web address to the full reference.

Reference list: Prior, H. (2020) Away with the penguins . Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Away-Penguins-Hazel-Prior-ebook (Accessed: 20 September 2021).

In-text citation: (Prior, 2020, 74%)

Reference list: Faulkner, W. (2000) Light in August. Available at: https://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=UniReading&isbn=9781446485521 (Accessed: 10 September 2021).

In-text citation: (Faulkner, 2000, ch. 7, p. 105)

• Elements to include
• Print journals or print journals now online
• Online only journals
• Versions in repositories

The information you include in the reference will depend on whether the journal is published in print (but uploaded for electronic access), only published online, or is a version found in an institutional repository. You can usually tell the difference by looking for page numbers. If each article in the journal begins at page 1, or has no page number at all, it is likely to be an online-only journal. 

• Article title (in single quotation marks)
• Journal title (in italics, capitalise the first letter of each word except linking words)
• Volume number
• Issue number (if present, in round brackets)
• Page numbers or article reference number (Include the page numbers of the whole article when writing your full citation, not just the pages you have referred to)
• DOI or web link for online-only articles

See the examples in the other tabs in this box.

Examples for articles in print copies of journal articles or a print journal accessed online (e.g. on JSTOR)

Traditionally all articles were published in print format in issues which then formed part of a volume and this way of citing them (giving volume, issue and page numbers) has been retained even though most are now available online. There is no need to include the DOI or web address for articles with volume numbers and page numbers or an article reference number even if you accessed them online.

A single author:

Reference list:   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.

In-text citation: (Gulddal, 2020)

Two authors - include them both separated by 'and' or &:

Reference list:  Thomas, D. and Tian, L. (2021) 'Hits from the Bong: the impact of recreational marijuana dispensaries on property values',  Regional Science and Urban Economics,  87, article number 103655.

In-text citation: (Thomas and Tian, 2021)

Three authors - include them all, separate the first two with a comma and use 'and' or & before the third author:

Reference list:  Adeyeye, S.A.O., Ashaolu, T.J. and Idowu-Adebayo, F. (2022) 'Mycotoxins: food safety, consumer health and Africa's food security',  Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds , 42(8), pp. 5779–5795.

In-text citation: (Adeyeye, Ashaolu and Idowu-Adebayo, 2022)

Four or more authors - include them all in the full reference , but for the in-text citation just state the first author, followed by  et al .

Reference list: Moise, L., Gutiérrez, A.H., Khan, S., Tan, S., Ardito, M., Martin, W.D. & De Groot, A.S. (2020) 'New immunoinformatics tools for swine: designing epitope-driven vaccines, predicting vaccine efficacy, and making vaccines on demand',  Frontiers in Immunology,  11, article number 563362.

In-text citation:   (Moise  et al. , 2020)

Examples for online-only journals

If the journal is ONLY available online, you should include the DOI or the URL in the full reference. Online-only journal articles may not have page numbers or reference numbers, or pagination for each article will begin with '1'. The rules for in-text citations are the same as for print articles.

Article with a DOI:

Reference list:  Mair, A., Poirier, M. and Conway M.A. (2021) 'Age effects in autobiographical memory depend on the measure',  PLoS one,  16(10), article number e0259279. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259279

Article without a DOI:

Reference list: Farrell, L.G. (2013) 'Challenging assumptions about IT skills in higher education'. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education , 6. Available at: http://www.aldinhe.ac.uk/ojs/index.php?journal=jldhe&page=article&op=view&path[]=173&path[]=138 (Accessed: 23 June 2021).

Examples for versions of articles found in repositories

Authors will often put versions of their articles into institutional repositories to comply with funding requirements to make the research Open Access. These may be pre-print versions (before peer review has taken place) or post-print versions, also known as author accepted manuscripts (the final version of the text, following peer review, to be published in the journal).

Pre-print example

Allen, R. J., Horowitz, L. W., Naik, V., Oshima, N., O'Connor, F., Turnock, S., Shim, S., Le Sager, P., Van Noije, T., Tsigaridis, K., Bauer, S. E., Sentman, L. T., John, J. G., Broderick, C., Deushi, M., Folberth, G., Fujimori, S. and Collins, B.  (2021) 'Significant climate benefits from near-term climate forcer mitigation in spite of aerosol reductions'. To be published in Environmental Research Letters  [Preprint]. Available at: http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/view/creators/90004988.html (Accessed: 24 June 2021).

For post-prints which are identical in content to the published version, you should cite the published version instead of citing the repository version.

• Chapter author(s)
• Chapter title in single quotation marks
• 'in' followed by book author(s)/editor(s)
• Book title (in italics)
• Publisher's name
• Chapter pagination

Include the page extent of the whole chapter when writing your full citation. Put just the pages you have referred to in the in-text citation.

Reference list: Singh, H., Khurana, L.K. and Singh, R. (2018) 'Pharmaceutical development', in Vohora, D. and Singh, G. (eds)  Pharmaceutical medicine and translational clinical research , London: Academic Press, pp.33-46.

In-text citation: (Singh, Khurana and Singh, 2018, p.35)

You can find many different types of information on the Internet. Check that the item you are referencing isn't a journal article, book chapter, or another type of publication which you should be citing in a different way.

• Author (person or company that created the webpage)
• Year of publication or last update (in round brackets). Scroll to the bottom of the page but if there is no date put (no date)
• Page title (in italics)
• Available at: URL (Accessed: date)

Webpage created by a person

Reference list:  Bologna, C. (2018)  What happens to your mind and body when you feel homesick?  Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-happens-mindbody-homesick_us_5b201ebde4b09d7a3d77eee1 (Accessed: 24 June 2021).

In-text citation: (Bologna, 2018)

Webpage created by an organisation

Reference list: World Health Organization (2020) Salt reduction . Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/salt-reduction (Accessed: 24 June 2021).

In-text citation: (World Health Organization, 2020)

Further guidance on referencing websites

Have a look at this Study Advice video tutorial (note that the format of the examples may not match the guidance given above):

• Referencing websites (video) Watch this brief video tutorial for more on the topic.
• Referencing websites (transcript) Read the transcript.

A secondary reference is used when you are referring to a source which you have not read yourself, but have seen quoted or read about in another source.  Where possible, you should always try to read the original of anything you wish to refer to ; otherwise you are relying on the author who cited the reference to have interpreted it correctly and not taken it out of context. Use the reference list at the end of the source you are reading to find details of the reference and search for it using the search boxes below.

Find books using the Enterprise catalogue

Just type in the first author's surname and a few words from the title.

Find journal articles using Summon

Just type in the first author's surname and first part of the article title.

If you can't get hold of the original source you'll need to do a secondary reference and you should make clear that you are not using the original source. Only include the source you have used in your list of references following the guidance for citing that type of publication. 

Different Schools/Departments might have different preferred ways of doing this, so do check any advice you are given or ask your course tutor if you are not sure. Otherwise, this is general guidance.

If the author quotes another source:

F rance (2003, quoted in Weingart et al ., 2018, p. 24) provides evidence that hospitals use internal reporting procedures to identify...

If the author summarises another source

In-text citation: According to France (2003, cited in Weingart  et al. , 2018, p. 24) , hospitals use internal reporting procedures to identify...

In both examples only the full reference for the article by Weingart et al . would be included in the reference list.

• Author, initials.
• Year (in round brackets)
• Title of document.
• Date (if avaialble)
• Collection name
• Document number.
• Name of archive
• Location of archive

In-text citation: ( Author , Year)

Reference list: Becket, S. (1974) Letter from Samuel Beckett to Vera Beckett. 1 January 1974. Letters from Samuel Beckett to Vera Beckett series BC MS 5411 B, University of Reading Special Collections, Reading .

In-text citation: (Beckett, 1974)

Cite the item you have seen - if you have seen an artwork in a book or catalogue, reference that book or catalogue (use our Images examples .) If you have seen the painting or exhibition, cite that as follows; 

Exhibitions

• Title of exhibition (in italics)
• [Exhibition]
• Location. Date(s) of exhibition

If it's an online exhibition, use [Online exhibition] and add;

In-text citation: ( Title of exhibition , Year)

Example: 

Reference list:  Yayoi Kusama: Infinity mirror rooms  (2021) [Exhibition]. Tate Modern, London. 18 May 2021-12 June 2022.

Reference list: Vida Americana: Mexican muralists remake American art, 1925 - 1945 (2020) [Online exhibition] Whitney Museum of American Art. 17 February 2020 - 31 January 2021. Available at: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/vida-americana (Accessed: 23 January 2021).

In-text citation: ( Yayoi Kusama: Infinity mirror rooms , 2021)

In-text citation: ( Vida Americana: Mexican muralists remake American art, 1925 - 1945 , 2020)

Works of art (paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations.)

• Title of artwork (in italics)
• Medium (e.g. Sculpture, Mixed-media, Video installation, Oil on canvas, etc) in square brackets
• (Viewed: date)

OR if you accessed it online, use the URL as the location

• Available at: URL
• (Accessed: date)

In-text citation: ( Artist , Year)

Reference list: Bacon, F. (1943-4)  Three studies for figures at the base of a crucifixion  [Oil and pastel on board]. Tate Britain, London (Viewed: 30 August 2022).

In-text citation: (Bacon ,  1943-4)

OR if accessed online;

Reference list:  Bacon, F. (1943-4)  Three studies for figures at the base of a crucifixion  [Oil and pastel on board]. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bacon-three-studies-for-figures-at-the-base-of-a-crucifixion-n06171 (Accessed: 1 July 2021). 

• Publishing organisation  
• Year of publication/last updated (in round brackets)  
• Title of report  (in italics)  
•  Available at: URL or DOI (Accessed: date)

Reference list:  Bureau van Dijk (2020)  Tesco plc company report . Available at: http://fame.bvdep.com (Accessed: 27 May 2021). 

In-text citation: (Bureau van Dijk, 2020)

• Author of paper
• Year of publication (in round brackets)
• Title of paper (in single quotation marks)
• Title of conference proceedings: subtitle (in italics)
• Location and date of conference
• Place of publication: Publisher
• Page references for the paper

Reference list:  Jones, L. (2018) 'Polymer blends based on compact disc scrap',  Proceedings of the Annual Technical Conference - Society of Plastics Engineers.  San Francisco, May 6-9. Brookfield, CT: Society of Plastics Engineers. pp.236-254.

In-text citation:  (Jones, 2018)

• Film from streaming service

You should include the following elements:

• Title of film (in italics)
• Year of distribution (in round brackets)
• Directed by
• [Feature film]
• Place of distribution: Distributor

In-text citation: ( Title of film , Year)

Reference list:  Fahrenheit 9/11  (2004) Directed by M. Moore. [Feature film]. Santa Monica, CA: Lions Gate Films.

In-text citation:  ( Fahrenheit 9/11 , 2004)

For examples of how to cite Films in different formats, please see the examples in the Cite them right e-book in the Harvard Referencing chapter, under "Audiovisual recordings...";

• Available at: DOI or Name of service or URL

Reference list:  Fatherhood  (2021) Directed by P. Weitz. Available at: Netflix (Accessed: 28 June 2021).

In-text citation: ( Fatherhood , 2021)

For examples of how to cite Films in different formats like Blu-ray, DVD, Video Cassette, broadcast and TV series, please see the examples in the Cite them right e-book in the Harvard Referencing chapter, under "Audiovisual recordings...";

See our section on YouTube videos:

• Citing YouTube videos

Figures such as graphs, charts and diagrams that you have used from other sources should be referenced in the same way that you would any other material.

Each one should have a caption below it labelled as 'Figure', sequentially numbered, and given a title. When you refer to it in your writing, use the figure number. Give a full citation in the reference list for the source of the image. See the following example:

Example of referring to a figure in a sentence:

The prebiotics can induce direct or indirect effect on the gut-associated epithelial and immune cells (Figure 3).

Full details for reference list:

Pujari, R. and Banerjee, G. (2021) 'Impact of prebiotics on immune response: from the bench to the clinic'.  Immunology and Cell Biology , 99(3), pp. 255-273.

• General guidance
• Public GenAI generated material
• Private GenAI generated material (e.g. ChatGPT)

You should not use AI, in any of its forms, to produce work that you claim is your own. Where you are permitted to use AI services such as ChatGPT, you should declare this and cite it as a source.

• Citing public GenAI content
• Citing private GenAI content e.g. ChatGPT

For more information on the use of Generative AI tools in your studies consult the University's official guidance and the Study Advice guide linked below.

• Using generative AI tools at University University of Reading guidance on using Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools (GenAI), such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to support your studies.
• Generative artificial intelligence and university study This guide aims to inform and support you as you navigate the fast-pacing, and potentially confusing, landscape of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology currently available. How can you benefit from such technology in your learning whilst studying for your degree, without breaking academic integrity rules or disadvantaging yourself or others in the process? You can use this guide as a departure point for reflection on these questions and further discussion with your peers and tutors.

Cite publicly available AI-generated material in the same way as an electronic version of a source (e.g. an artwork).

• Creator (name of AI)
• Title of work  (in italics)
• Medium (e.g. Digital art) in square brackets

Reference list:  Canva (2024) A plate full of vegetables  [Digital art]. Available at: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGNR8cKAU8/XrRaUYe-xHkGWYfF7IbnrA/view?utm_content=DAGNR8cKAU8&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor (Accessed: 8 August 2024). 

In-text citation: (Canva, 2024)

If the AI-generated content is only available to you, for example use of ChatGPT in conversation, cite this as a personal communication and include a description of the AI-generated material in your in-text citation.

Check your assignment brief, or with your module convenor, for guidance on whether you need to provide a copy of the 'conversation' with the AI tool as an appendix to your work.

• Name of AI tool
• Year of communication (in round brackets)
• Medium of communication.
• Receiver of communication.
• Day / month of communication.

Reference list:  OpenAI ChatGPT (2024) ChatGPT response to Jackie Skinner, 8 August.

In-text citation:  When prompted by the author, ChatGPT responded with a summary of the ‘benefits of prebiotics’ (OpenAI ChatGPT, 2024). A copy of this response is in Appendix 1.

• Name of issuing body
• Place of publication (if in print)
• Publisher (if in print)
• Series (in round brackets) - if applicable

If accessed online:

DOI  or  Available at: URL (Accessed: date)

Print publication:

Reference list: Environment Agency (2020)  The flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy action plan 2021.  Bristol: Environment Agency.

In-text citation:  (Environment Agency, 2020)

Publication accessed online:

Reference list: Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (2016)  Vitamin D and health.  Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/537616/SACN_Vitamin_D_and_Health_report.pdf (Accessed: 25 August 2021).

In-text citation:  (Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, 2016)

• Image from a book
• Image from an internet collection / social media
• Image you created yourself
• Image used purely for decoration

Images and photographs that you have seen in books, articles and other published material should be cited in the same way you would cite the source of the image. Add the page number and figure / illustration number if there is one from the source item to your in-text citation (use the same terminology they do to number their illustrations, eg. illus., fig., diagram, table, plate etc.) 

• Year of publication
• Page number and illustration / figure / plate number from the source book or article if they use one.)

You may wish to use the title / subject matter of the image in your sentence or caption for the image;

Reference list: Glaser, M. and Ilić, M. (2017) The design of dissent . Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers.

In-text citation: The We Are Bullet Proof poster by Jon Key created a narrative of strength during Black Lives Matter (Glaser and Ilić, 2017, p. 261)

Any image or photograph from a social media site, online image collection or website can be referenced in this way.

• Photographer (if available)
• (Year of publication) in round brackets
• Title of photograph or collection  in italics
• Available at: DOI or URL 

Reference list:  stanitsa_dance (2021)  Cossack dance ensemble . Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/COI_slphWJ_/ (Accessed: 13 June 2021).

In-text citation:  (stanitsa_dance, 2021)

If the image is one you have created yourself, give it a figure number and title in the caption and add (Source: the author) to show that it is your own work. The image below shows how you would do this;

You do not need to include it in the reference list.

If you have reproduced an image in your work and it is purely decorative you should still acknowledge the creator and source but there is no need to include a full reference.

Underneath the image add the caption:

'Image: [creator] via [website image captured from]'.

For example:    Image: Steve Buissine via Piaxabay

If it is a picture you have taken use this format:

'Image by author'.

• Command papers
• Law reports
• Official records published in Hansard
• Papers (House of Commons/House of Lords)
• Statutes (Acts of Parliament)
• Statutory Instruments

Students studying Law

If you are studying Law, you will be expected to use the OSCOLA system of referencing . You will have advice on this from your School, and can find support on the Law guide:

• Referencing guidance for Law students

Students studying other subjects

If you are not studying Law, but need to refer to legal or Parliamentary documents, the examples in this box give acceptable citation formats for commonly used materials in the Harvard style. We have concentrated on key UK legislative sources here. For guidance on citing other materials, and those from other jurisdictions, see the Cite Them Right guide:

For Bills from the House of Commons and House of Lords you should include the following elements:

• Publication year (in round brackets)
• Parliament: House of Commons or Lords
• Place of publication
• If viewed online replace 5 & 6 with Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

Reference list:

Agriculture Bill  (2019) Parliament: House of Commons, Bill no. 2292. London: The Stationery Office.

Agriculture Bill  (2019) Parliament: House of Commons, Bill no. 2292. Available at: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/2292 (Accessed: 12 July 2022).

In-text citation:

Mr Gove introduced the Agriculture Bill (2019)...

For Command Papers (including Green and White papers) you should include the following elements:

• Title of report of consultation paper (in italics)
• Command Paper number (in round brackets) preceeded by Cmnd:
• If accessed online replace 5 & 6 with DOI or Available at: URL (Accessed: date)

Papers accessed online

Department for Work and Pensions (2021) Shaping Future Support: the Health and Disability Green Paper  (Cmnd. 470). Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/shaping-future-support-the-health-and-disability-green-paper (Accessed: 30 July 2021).

(Department for Work and Pensions, 2021)

Papers accessed in print

Department of Social Security (2000) The Pension Credit: Consultation Paper  (Cmnd. 4900). London: HMSO.

(Department of Social Security, 2000)

Law reports (cases) before 2002

Include the following elements:

• Name of case (in single quotation marks)
• Title of law report (in italics)
• Page numbers

'Bibby Cheshire v. Golden Wonder Ltd' (1972) Weekly Law Reports , 1, pp. 1487-1492.

('Bibby Cheshire v. Golden Wonder Ltd', 1972)

Law reports (cases) from 2002

From 2002 cases have been given a neutral citation. This means that it isn't necessary to include details of the printed law report series in which it was published. When using this type of citation you must give details of the publication in which the case was reported or the database/website you used.

• Name of the parties involved in the case (in single quotation marks)
• Court and case number
• Name of database or website (in italics)
• DOI or Available at: URL (Accessed: date)

'Rees v. Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis' (2021) Court of Appeal (Civil Division), case 49.  BAILII . Available at: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2021/49.html (Accessed: 30 July 2021).

('Rees v. Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis', 2021)

Hansard is the official record of the business of the Houses of the UK Parliament. This includes databases, speeches, answers and statements. References to Hansard follow a similar pattern to journal articles. Include the following:

• Name of speaker/author
• Subject of debate or speech (in single quotation marks)
• Hansard: Name of House of Parliament (in italics)
• Debates/written statement/Westminster Hall or petitions (in italics)
• Day and month
• Volume number, column number or page number

Bonnar, S. (2021) ' Ethics and human rights: climate change ', Hansard: House of Commons debates , 14 July, 699, c. 355. Available at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2021-07-14/debates/FED21B9A-F4C2-4437-8CFD-3A08E5929C48/EthicsAndHumanRightsClimateChange (Accessed: 30 July 2021).

Steve Bonnar MP (2021) asked if the UK Government would create a climate justice fund.

To cite papers from the House of Parliament or House of Lords include the following elements:

• Parliament, House of...
• Title (in italics) including the Session dates if appropriate.
• Session dates and Paper number (in round brackets) preceeded by HC or HL as appropriate. Note that to distinguish House of Lords papers from the House of Commons paper with the same number the Paper number is enclosed in an extra set of round brackets e.g. (HL 2002-2003, (254))
• Place of publication:

Parliament, House of Commons (2004) The English national stadium project at Wembley, Session 2003-2004. (HC 2003-2004, 254). London: The Stationery Office.

(Parliament, House of Commons, 2004) 

When referencing Acts of Parliament you should use the short title of the Act and year it was enacted. It is not necessary to include the year in brackets as it would duplicate the year in the title. Include the following elements:

• Title of Act - including year and chapter (in italics)
• Country/Jurisdiction (only required if referencing legislation from more than one country)

Food Safety Act 1990, c. 16 . Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/16/contents (Accessed: 20 July 2021).

As stipulated in the Food Safety Act 1990...

When citing Statutory Instruments (SIs) include the following information:

• Name/Title and year  (in italics)
• SI year and number (in round brackets)

Children (Performances and Activities) (Wales) Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/1757). Available at:  https://www.legislation.gov.uk/wsi/2015/1757/contents/made (Accessed: 23 July 2021).

Referring to the  Children (Performances and Activities) (Wales) Regulations 2015...

• Lines within plays
• Line of a poem within an anthology

These examples use Harvard style. If you are studying in English Literature , you will have separate guidance from your department on using MHRA style for referencing. See the link below for more information:

• English Literature citing references guidance Guidance on using the MHRA style for students studying English literature.

To cite a novel use the same format as for an authored book

• Citing an authored book
• Title  (in italics)
• Edition information 

Reference list: Shakespeare, W. (2008) Twelth night or what you will. Edited by K. Elam. London: Cengage.

In-text citation: (Shakespeare, 2008, 1.3: 13).

• Author of the poem
• Title of poem in single quotation marks
• 'in' followed by book author(s)/editor(s)/compiler(s) 
• Book title  (in italics)
• Poem pagination

Include the page extent of the whole poem when writing your full citation. Put just the pages you have referred to in the in-text citation.

Reference list: Orr, J. (2002) 'The dying African', in Basker, J. (ed.) Amazing grace: an anthology of poems about slavery, 1660-1810 . New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 533-535.

In-text citation: (Orr, 2002, p. 533)

• Name of author or issuing body
• Title of map (in italics)
• Sheet number or tile (if applicable)
• Scale (if available)
• Series or section in Digimap if appropriate (in round brackets)

Available at DOI  or URL (Accessed: date)

Reference list: Ordnance Survey (2012)  Reading & Windsor: Henley-on-Thames & Bracknell , sheet   175, 1:50 000. Southampton: Ordnance Survey (Landranger series).

In-text citation: (Ordnance Survey, 2012)

Reference list:  Dower, J. (1832)  A map shewing the parliamentary representation of England & Wales, according as the same are settled by the Reform Act passed 7th June 1832,  1 inch to 35 miles. London: J. Gardner.

In-text citation: (Dower, 1832)

Reference list:  Ordnance Survey (2020)  Whiteknights , Reading,  1:10 000. (Digimap Ordnance Survey) Available at http://edina.ac.uk/digimap/ (Accessed: 20 June 2021).

In-text citation:  (Ordnance Survey, 2020)

If you have any queries about citing maps, contact your Academic Liaison Librarian

• Organisation / author.
• Title of report (in italics)
• Available at: URL (if you have to login with a username and password to access the report, then use the homepage of the database or a permalink) (Accessed: date)

Reference list: Mintel (2019)  Sports and energy drinks - UK.   Available at: http://www.academic.mintel.com (Accessed: 5th July 2021).

In-text citation: (Mintel, 2019)

• Articles with an author (byline)
• Articles without an author
• Author’(s) surname and initials
• Title of article (in single quotation marks)
• Title of newspaper (in italics - capitalize first word of each word in title except for linking words such as and, of, the, for)
• Edition if required (in round brackets)
• Section and Page reference if available

If accessed online: DOI or  Available at: URL (Accessed: date)

Printed article

Reference list: Graham, K. (2020) 'The biggest tree and the smallest axe',  The Guardian , 31 August, pp.21-22.

In-text citation: (Graham, 2020)

Online article

Reference list: Pinkstone, J. (2021) 'Mountains set the pace of evolution, not climate change, say scientists', The Daily Telegraph , 2 September. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/02/mountains-set-pace-evolution-not-climate-change-say-scientists/ (Accessed: 3 September 2021).

In-text citation: (Pinkstone, 2021)

• Title of newspaper  (in italics - capitalize first word of each word in title except for linking words such as and, of, the, for)
• Page reference if available

Note: if you are using the online version of a newspaper, which often varies from the print edition, you would omit page reference and instead include Available at: URL (Accessed: date)

Printed article:

Reference list: The Daily Telegraph (2021) 'Walking on wooden floors could help to generate power', 2 September, p. 12.

In-text citation: ( The Daily Telegraph , 2021, p. 12)

Online article:

Reference list: The Guardian  (2021) 'We cannot allow inequality to increase within the education system', 2 September. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/inequality-education-exams-schools-private-b1900252.html (Accessed: 4 September 2021).

In-text citation: ( The Guardian , 2021)

• Inventor(s)
• Authorising organisation e.g. UK Intellectual Property Office, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
• Patent number
• If online - Available at: URL (Accessed: date)

Online patent

Reference list: Cox, A. and Lee, J. (2021) Water remediation system.  UK Intellectual Property Office Patent no. GB2591282A. Available at: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/ (Accessed: 2 September 2021).

In-text citation: (Cox and Lee, 2021)

Printed patent

Reference list: Kruger, L.H. (1989)  Degradation of granular starch.  US Patent no.: US4838944.

In-text citation: (Kruger, 1989)

If you have obtained information which is not publically accessible you should cite it as a personal communication. This can include conversations taking place in person, by phone or by online means (such as Zoom, Teams, Skype). It can also be written communications such as letters, email, text messages, WhatsApp messages, SnapChat messages etc.

Include the following information:

• Sender / speaker / author

Reference list: Chen , B. (2022) Conversation with Lucy Atkins, 30 July

In-text citation: (Chen, 2022)

Reference list: Garcia, C. (2022) WhatsApp message to Anna Jaworska, 12 July

In-text citation: (Garcia, 2022)

• Radio programme online
• Title of programme (in italics)
• Year of broadcast (in round brackets)
• Radio station
• Date of transmission (DD Month) and time

In-text citation: ( Programme title , Year)

Reference list: Kermode and Mayo's Film Review  (2021) BBC Radio 5 Live, 25 June, 14:30.

In-text citation:   Presenters and Wittertainees say hello to Jason Isaacs ( Kermode and Mayo's Film Review , 2021)

• Year of original broadcast (in round brackets)
• Day and month of original transmission (if available)
• Available at: DOI or URL (Accessed: date)

Bibliography:  Elvenquest  (2011) BBC Radio 4, 7 November. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016vn8f (Accessed: 2 July 2021).

In-text citation: ( Elvenquest, 2011)

• Title (not in italics)
• Translator and edition, if required (in round brackets)
• publisher (if in print)

Reference list: The Holy Bible: new international version (1981) London: Hodder and Stoughton,

In-text citation:  (The Holy Bible, 1981, John 14: 27)

Reference list: The Qur'an: a new translation (2015) (Translated by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem.) Oxford: Oxford University Press

In-text citation: (The Qur'an, 2015, 20: 26)  

Reference list: The Torah: the five books of Moses (1962) Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.

In-text citation: (The Torah,1962, Devarim 4: 2)

• General guidance: posts
• General guidance: pages

There are many different forms of social media.  Here is some general guidance for citing specific social media posts.

• Author of post  
• Year posted (in round brackets)  
• Title or description of post (in single quotation marks) 
• [Name of platform]  
• Day/month posted  
• Available at: URL (Accessed: date) 

Reference list: Financial Times (2021) ‘The London luxury property market was slowed down by the pandemic, but it is likely to bounce back soon’. [Facebook] 2 July. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/financialtimes/posts/10159435194305750 (Accessed: 6 July 2021). 

In-text citation: (Financial Times, 2021) 

There are many different forms of social media.  Here is some general guidance for citing a social media page, rather than an individual post.

• Author (if available; if not use title)  
• Year site was last updated (in round brackets)  
• Title of site (in italics)  
• [Name of platform]  

Reference list: University of Reading Library (2022) [Facebook]. Available at:  https://www.facebook.com/universityofreadinglibrary (Accessed: 20 July 2022). 

In text: (University of Reading Library, 2022) 

• Year tweet posted (in round brackets)
• Title or description of Tweet
• Day/month tweet posted

Reference list: Harvard Business Review (2021) ‘In this large-scale study of military performance measures, negative words — like selfish, passive, and scattered — were much more frequently applied to women’. [Twitter] 4 July.  Available at: https://twitter.com/HarvardBiz/status/1411692276888317952 (Accessed: 6 July 2021). 

In-text citation: (Harvard Business Review, 2021) 

When citing an Instagram Post, please use the guidance below.  When citing a photograph or image specifically, please see our citing an image from social media guidance .

• Author (Instagram account/poster)
• Year posted (in round brackets)
• Title of post in single quotation marks
• [Instagram]
• Day/month of posted message

Reference list:  University of Reading (2022) 'Say hello to Reading's Climate Stripes bus!' [Instagram] 27 July. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/CghAmV4Mre-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link (Accessed: 2 August 2022). 

In-text citation: (University of Reading, 2022)

Table taken directly from another source

Tables should be sequentially numbered in your work with the title above the table - as in the following example in the Harvard referencing style. When referring to the table in your writing use the table number. 

A citation should be included at the end of the table title and a full citation added to your reference list for the source. 

Example of referring to a table in a sentence:

The macronutrient content of the diets used in the study is shown in Table 2. 

Mitchell, N.S. and Ard, J.D. (2021) 'Weight loss, lifestyle, and dietary factors in cardiovascular diseases in African Americans and Hispanics', in Ferdinand, K.C., Taylor, H.A. and Rodriguez, C.J. (eds)  Cardiovascular disease in racial and ethnic minority populations . Cham: Humana Press, pp. 167-182.

Table you have compiled yourself from multiple sources

If you are taking information from multiple sources and compiling your own table you still need to acknowledge those sources. 

Once again your table will need to be numbered in sequence with other tables in your work and have a title. For example:

Table 1: Turnover of Tesco PLC 2017-2021

You can then add a, b, c etc next to the statistics in the table (or the columns depending on how your data is arranged, see the example linked below) and then add a matching lettered list of citations for the sources at the bottom of the table:

Sources: a Tesco PLC (2017); b Tesco PLC (2018) etc

 Then in your reference list the end of your work, you would add the full reference for each source. For example:

Tesco PLC (2017)  Annual report and financial statement . Available at:  https://www.tescoplc.com/investors/reports-results-and-presentations/reports-archive/  (Accessed: 10 November 2022).

Tesco PLC (2018) Annual report and financial statement . Available at:  https://www.tescoplc.com/investors/reports-results-and-presentations/reports-archive/  (Accessed: 10 November 2022).

 See the following example where a & b has been added to the columns, as everything in that column has come from the same source:

• Example of citing multiple sources used in a table

The other option is to arrange it with the brief citations in the table. See Table 1 in the following example. The full references would go into your reference list at the end of the work in the same way as Method 1.

• How to cite sources in a table (Method 2) This example is in the APA referencing style but the same approach would work with Harvard.

It is strongly recommended that you use published sources such as books and journal articles in your assignments instead of materials posted by academics on Blackboard. Always check with the academic who has set the assignment whether you are allowed to include citations for their materials in your work.

PowerPoint presentations

• Author or lecturer
• Title of presentation (in single quotation marks)
• [Presentation slides]
• Module code: module title (in italics)
• Institution name
• Available at: https://bb.reading.ac.uk (Accessed: date)

Reference list: Hartl, F. (2022) 'Advanced electrochemical and electroanalytical methods' [Presentation slides]. CH4AN1: Advanced analytical techniques for the molecular sciences . University of Reading. Available at: https://bb.reading.ac.uk (Accessed: 6 July 2022).

In-text citation: (Hartl, 2022)

Recorded lecture

• Year (in round brackets)
• Title of lecture (in single quotation marks)
• Medium [in square brackets]
• Institution

Reference list: Bull, S. (2021) 'Anatomy of taste' [Recorded lecture]. FB3QSF: Advanced food quality and sensory . University of Reading. 21 February. Available at: https://bb.reading.ac.uk (Accessed: 1 July 2021).

In-text citation: (Bull, 2021)

• Name of authorising organisation
• Number and title of standard (in italics)
• Available at: URL (if online)
• Accessed: date (if online)

Print standard:

Reference list: British Standards Institution (2020)  BS ISO 21543:2020: Milk and milk products - guidelines for the application of near infrared spectroscopy.  London: British Standards Institution.

In-text citation: (British Standards Institution, 2020)

Online standard

Reference list: British Standards Institution (2020)  BS ISO 21543:2020: Milk and milk products - guidelines for the application of near infrared spectroscopy. Available at: https://bsol.bsigroup.com (Accessed: 6 July 2021).

In-text citation:  (British Standards Institution, 2020)

• Name of author
• Year of submission (in round brackets)
• Title of thesis (in Italics)
• Degree statement (eg PhD thesis, MSc thesis, MA thesis)
• Name of the University or degree awarding body
• If accessed online: DOI or Available at: URL (Accessed: date)

Print thesis

Reference list: Lalani, B. (201 7)  Economics and adoption of conservation agriculture in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique.  PhD thesis. Reading University.

In-text citation: (Lalani, 2017)

Online thesis

Reference list:  Alarifi, S.N.M. (2017)  In vitro studies on gum acacia and its potential as a prebiotic in an elderly population.  PhD thesis. University of Reading. Available at: https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/76135/ (Accessed: 11 July 2022).

In-text citation:  (Alarifi, 2017)

• Author (name or person/organisation posting the video)
• Year video posted (in round brackets)
• Title of film or programme (in italics)
• Date uploaded (if available)

If you need to refer to a specific point in a video, use the format minutes:seconds in your in-text citation to note the time code e.g. (TEDx Talks, 2018, 2:34).

Reference list:  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 2021).

In-text citation:  (TEDx Talks, 2018)

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A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

• The Honor Code
• In-Text Citation Examples
• When neither the author nor the page number is mentioned in the body of the sentence, you should include both the author’s last name and the page number in the parenthetical citation.

Colleges and universities need to create policies that foster inclusion for low-income students (Jack 24).

• When the author’s name is mentioned in the sentence, you should include only the page number in your parenthetical citation.

As Anthony Jack argues, colleges and universities need to create policies that foster inclusion for low-income students (24).

• If the source you are writing about does not have page numbers, or if you consulted an e-book version of the source, you should include only the author’s name in the parenthetical citation:

Colleges and universities need to create policies that foster inclusion for low-income students (Jack).

• If you mention the author in the body of the sentence and there is no page number in the source, you should not include a parenthetical citation.

As Anthony Jack argues, colleges and universities need to create policies that foster inclusion for low-income students.

• If you are referring to an entire work rather than a specific page, you do not need to include a page number.

In The Privileged Poor, Anthony Jack describes many obstacles that low-income students face at selective colleges and universities.

• If you are referring to a source that has no listed author, you should include the title (or a shortened version of the title) in your parenthetical citation.

Harvard College promises “to educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society” (“Mission, Vision, & History”).

• If you are referring to a source that has two authors, you should include both authors in your parenthetical citation.

The researchers tested whether an intervention during the first year of college could improve student well-being (Walton and Cohen 1448).

• If you refer to a source that has more than two authors, you should include the first author’s name followed by et al. ( Et al. is an abbreviation for et alia which means “and others” in Latin.) When you use et al. in a citation, you should not put it in italics.

The researchers studied more than 12,000 students who were interested in STEM fields (LaCosse et al. 8).

• If you refer to more than one source by the same author in your paper, you should include the title (or a shortened version of the title) in your parenthetical citation so that readers will know which source to look for in your Works Cited list. If you mention the author’s name in the sentence, you only need to include the title and page number. If you mention the author and title in the sentence, you only need to include the page number.

Colleges and universities need to create policies that foster inclusion for low-income students (Jack, Privileged Poor 24).

According to Anthony Jack, colleges and universities need to create policies that foster inclusion for low-income students ( Privileged Poor 24).

As Anthony Jack writes in Privileged Poor, colleges and universities need to create policies that foster inclusion for low-income students (24).

• If you want to credit multiple authors for making the same point, you can include them all in one parenthetical citation. 

Students who possess cultural capital, measured by proxies like involvement in literature, art, and classical music, tend to perform better in school (Bourdieu and Passeron; Dumais; Orr).

• If you refer to a source that includes line numbers in the margins, numbered paragraphs, numbered chapters, or numbered sections rather than page numbers, you should include the number in your parenthetical citation, along with “line,” “ch./ chs.,” or “sec./secs.”   You can include stable numbering like chapters even when there are no stable page numbers (as in an e-book). You should separate “line” or other designation from the work’s title or author’s name with a comma.  If the source does not include this type of numbering, you should not include it either.

We learn that when he went to the store to buy clothes for his son, “a frantic inspection of the boys’ department revealed no suits to fit the new-born Button” (Fitzgerald, ch.2).

• If you are citing a play, you should include the act and scene along with line numbers (for verse) or page numbers, followed by act and scene, (for prose).

Guildenstern tells Hamlet that “there has been much throwing about of brains” (Shakespeare, 2.2. 381-382).

Chris is in this mindset when he says, “a couple minutes, and your whole life changes, that’s it. It’s gone” (Nottage, 13; act 1, scene1).

• If you are referring to a video or audio recording that contains time stamps, you should include the time in your parenthetical citation to make it easy for your readers to find the part of the recording that you are citing.

In the Stranger Things official trailer, the audience knows that something unusual is going to happen from the moment the boys get on their bicycles to ride off into the night (0:16).

• Citation Management Tools
• In-Text Citations
• Works Cited Format
• Examples of Commonly Cited Sources
• Frequently Asked Questions about Citing Sources in MLA Format
• Sample Works Cited List

PDFs for This Section

• Citing Sources
• Online Library and Citation Tools

• MJC Library & Learning Center
• Research Guides

Format Your Paper & Cite Your Sources

• Harvard Style
• Citing Sources
• Avoid Plagiarism
• MLA Style (8th/9th ed.)
• APA Style, 7th Edition
• Chicago Style

What is Harvard Style?

What you need to know, harvard style tutorial.

• Other Styles
• Annotated Bibliographies
• How to Create an Attribution

Harvard Style

The Harvard referencing system is known as the Author-Date style . It emphasizes the name of the creator of a piece of information and the date of publication, with the list of references in alphabetical order at the end of your paper.

Unlike other citation styles, there is no single, definitive version of Harvard Style. Therefore, you may see a variation in features such as punctuation, capitalization, abbreviations, and the use of italics. 

Always check with your instructor and follow the rules he or she gives you.

• Harvard Style Guidelines Your class handout
• Harvard Referencing Quick Guide From Staffordshire University

Harvard Style will affect your paper in two places:

• In-text citations in the body of your paper, and
• The reference list at the end of your paper
• All in-text citations should be listed in the reference list at the end of your paper.
• Reference list entries need to contain all the information that someone reading your paper would need in order to find your source.
• Reference lists in Harvard Style are arranged alphabetically by first author.
• Begin your Reference list on a new page after your text and number it consecutively.

Sample References List:

Click on the Links Below to See Additional Examples:

• Sample Paper Paper provided by Kurt Olson
• Harvard Citation Examples Document created by The University of Western Australia

Click on the image below to launch this tutorial that was created by the University of Leeds. The section on Citing in Text is especially useful.

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• Next: Other Styles >>
• Last Updated: Jul 10, 2024 5:03 PM
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Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC BY-NC 4.0 Licenses .

Example essay extract with citations and references list: Home

Example essay extract with citations and references list.

Below is an example essay, complete with citations and references.

Please remember this is a fictional essay purely designed to demonstrate how and when to reference. 

Embedding experiences and voices in research can “challenge [the] studied ignorance” around race (Arday and Mirza, 2018, p.v) and the academy’s role as gatekeeper of what is considered “relevant knowledge” (Lillis, 2003). Academic conventions around skills such as writing can be excluding, forming “constructions of difference […] that deepen misrecognitions and inequalities” (Burke, 2018, p.366). Lillis (2003) and Arday et al. (2021) both use narrative to listen to the ways in which black students’ experiences are ignored and the marginalising effect of a refusal to validate multiple ways of knowing.

References:

Arday, J., Belluigi, D. Z. and Thomas, D. (2021) Attempting to break the chain: reimaging inclusive pedagogy and decolonising the curriculum within the academy.  Educational Philosophy and Theory .  53 (3), pp.298-313.

Arday, J. and Mirza, H. S. (eds.) (2018) Dismantling race in higher education:  racism, whiteness and decolonising the academy . London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Burke, P. J. (2018) Trans/forming pedagogical spaces: race, belonging and recognition in higher education. In: Arday, J. and Mirza, H. S. (eds.) Dismantling race in higher education: racism, whiteness and decolonising the academy . London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.365-382.

Lillis, T. (2003) Student writing as ‘academic literacies’: drawing on Bakhtin to move from critique to design. Language and Education. 17 (5), pp.192-207.

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Harvard (author date)

The Harvard (author-date) system comprises two elements: an  in-text citation and a bibliography at the end of the document. In the text of an assignment, ideas taken from other people are indicated by placing the author's surname and the date of publication in brackets. The bibliography at the end of the document then lists the references in alphabetical order by author's surname.

The Harvard examples in this guide are in the Cite them right Harvard style, as can be found in the Cite them right online resource (please see below for details).

• A to Z referencing on different types of resources
• Harvard FAQ's
• Harvard referencing hints and tips
• Glossary for referencing 

If you require information from these pages in another format, please  email us . 

For further and detailed information on the Harvard referencing style, please also use the University-subscribed online resource from Macmillan International, Cite them right online, developed from the authoritative Cite them right by Pears and Shields (2019). 

• Cite them right online - login as University of Birmingham (UoB students and staff only)
• Cite them right - ebook entry on FindIt@Bham (full access to UoB students and staff with UoB login)
• Cite them right - print book entry on FindIt@Bham 

NOTE:  Some of the examples below and in the UoB material on these pages have been invented by Library Services staff members.

Quick guide to Harvard (author-date) referencing

A basic guide to citing and referencing using the Harvard (author-date) system. For more detailed examples go to our A-Z guide  or Cite Them Right Online . 

Citing in text

A citation is an abbreviated indication of the source(s) you have used in text. Use the author(s)' or editor(s)' family name and date of publication.

• One Author/Editor:  (Stevens, 2013)
• Two Authors/Editors:  (Banerjee and Watson, 2011)
• Three Authors/Editors:  (Smith, Jones and Thomas, 2015)
• Four or more Authors/Editors:  Cite the first name listed in the source followed by et al . For example, This was proved by Dym et al . (2009)...
• No Author/Editor:  Use the title in italics; do not use 'anonymous' or anything similar, for example, It is maintained that medicine has greatly improved ( Medicine in old age , 1985, p.74)...
• No Author and no Date:  Use the title and 'no date'. For example, Thunderstorms have become increasingly common ( Trends in atmospheric pressure , no date)... 
• Citing multiple sources:  If you want to refer to two or more sources at the same time, separate them with semi-colons and order them chronologically. If more than one work is published in the same year, then they should be listed alphabetically by author/editor. For example:

A number of different studies (Jamieson, 2011; Hollingworth, 2012; Hatfield, 2013; Rogers, 2015) suggested that...

• Citing sources published in the same year by the same author:  If you wish to cite an author who has published more than one item in the same year, use a lower case letter to distinguish between them. The letters should be included in the reference list. For example, 

Peate (2014a) discusses changes to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Code of Conduct and the implications this has for nurses and midwives. In a later article Peate (2014b) criticises the NMC's decision to increase the registration fee  for nurses...

Page numbers:  When you are directly quoting exact text, or paraphrasing a specific part of a text, then you should also give the relevant page number(s) in your in-text citation.  See the example above for “No author/Editor”.

The pagination for the whole item (for example with a journal article, or for a chapter in an edited book) should then be given as usual in the reference list at the end.

A reference gives the full details of the brief citation you have referred to in the text and is shown at the end of your essay. A reference will include authors, titles, editions, publisher details or journal details. 

• Authors/ Editors: All authors'/ editors' names should be listed in your reference list (no matter how many there are)

Books 

Author/Editor, initials(s). Year of publication (in round brackets) Title in italics. Edition (if not the first edition). Place of publication: Publisher. Series and volume number (where relevant). 

• One Author:  Guy, J. (2001) The view across the river: Harriette Colenso and the Zulu struggle against imperialism . Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia.
• Two Authors:   Banerjee, A. and Watson, T.F. (2011) Pickard's manual of operative dentistry . 9th edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Three or more Authors:  List all the authors (no matter how many there are) and always separate the final two authors with and as shown below.

Dym, C.L., Little, P., Orwin, E.J., and Spjut, R.E (2009) Engineering design: a project based introduction . 3rd edn. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.

• Edited Book:  Jordan, J. and Sharp, I. (eds) (2003) Josephine Butler and the prostitution campaigns : diseases of the body politic. Vol. 1: The moral reclaimability of prostitutes . London: Routledge. 
• Chapter in a Book:  Sparkes, V. (2010) 'Function of the spine', in Everett, T.and Kell, C. (eds) Human movement: an introductory text . 6th edn. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingston Elsevier, pp.191-209.
• Ebook:  Hislop, V. (2014) The Sunrise . Available at http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindlestore (downloaded:17 June 2015).

Journal (Print) 

Author, Initial(s). (Year) Title of article (in single quotation marks), Title of Journal (in italics), Volume (unbracketed) and, where applicable, Number issue/part number (in brackets), page numbers.

Knapik, J.J., Cosio-Lima, L.M. and Reynolds, K.L. (2015) 'Efficacy of functional movement and screening for predicting injuries in coast guard cadets', The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , 29 (5), pp. 1157-1162.

Journal (Electronic)

Same information as above, but if doi available include at the end of the reference.

Wildman, S. (2009) 'Nursing and the issue of 'party' in the Church of England: the case of the Lichfield Diocesan Nursing Association', Nursing Inquiry , 16, pp. 94-102. doi:1111/j.1440-1800.2009.00441.x.

• Web pages with an author:  Snow, D (2015) How did so many soldiers survive the trenches? Available at:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3kgjxs (Accessed: 18 July 2015)
• Author as an organisation : BBC News (2014) 'Lights out' end of the day of WW1 centenary commemorations . Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3kgjxs http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28632223  (Accessed: 18 July 2015)
• No dates:  BBC History (no date) Duke of Wellington (1769-1852). Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historicfigures/wellingtondukeof.shtml (Accessed: 18 July 2015)

If you require any further help with referencing our Academic Skills Centre will be able to assist you with any help, advice or support you need. 

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Free Harvard Referencing Generator

Generate accurate Harvard reference lists quickly and for FREE, with MyBib!

🤔 What is a Harvard Referencing Generator?

A Harvard Referencing Generator is a tool that automatically generates formatted academic references in the Harvard style.

It takes in relevant details about a source -- usually critical information like author names, article titles, publish dates, and URLs -- and adds the correct punctuation and formatting required by the Harvard referencing style.

The generated references can be copied into a reference list or bibliography, and then collectively appended to the end of an academic assignment. This is the standard way to give credit to sources used in the main body of an assignment.

👩‍🎓 Who uses a Harvard Referencing Generator?

Harvard is the main referencing style at colleges and universities in the United Kingdom and Australia. It is also very popular in other English-speaking countries such as South Africa, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. University-level students in these countries are most likely to use a Harvard generator to aid them with their undergraduate assignments (and often post-graduate too).

🙌 Why should I use a Harvard Referencing Generator?

A Harvard Referencing Generator solves two problems:

• It provides a way to organise and keep track of the sources referenced in the content of an academic paper.
• It ensures that references are formatted correctly -- inline with the Harvard referencing style -- and it does so considerably faster than writing them out manually.

A well-formatted and broad bibliography can account for up to 20% of the total grade for an undergraduate-level project, and using a generator tool can contribute significantly towards earning them.

⚙️ How do I use MyBib's Harvard Referencing Generator?

Here's how to use our reference generator:

• If citing a book, website, journal, or video: enter the URL or title into the search bar at the top of the page and press the search button.
• Choose the most relevant results from the list of search results.
• Our generator will automatically locate the source details and format them in the correct Harvard format. You can make further changes if required.
• Then either copy the formatted reference directly into your reference list by clicking the 'copy' button, or save it to your MyBib account for later.

MyBib supports the following for Harvard style:

🍏 What other versions of Harvard referencing exist?

There isn't "one true way" to do Harvard referencing, and many universities have their own slightly different guidelines for the style. Our generator can adapt to handle the following list of different Harvard styles:

• Cite Them Right
• Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU)
• University of the West of England (UWE)

Daniel is a qualified librarian, former teacher, and citation expert. He has been contributing to MyBib since 2018.

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• Reference a Website in Harvard Style | Templates & Examples

Reference a Website in Harvard Style | Templates & Examples

Published on 19 May 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on 7 November 2022.

To reference a website in Harvard style , include the name of the author or organization, the year of publication, the title of the page, the URL, and the date on which you accessed the website.

Different formats are used for other kinds of online source, such as articles, social media posts and multimedia content. You can generate accurate Harvard references for all kinds of sources with our free reference generator:

Harvard Reference Generator

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Online articles, social media posts, images, videos and podcasts, referencing websites with missing information, frequently asked questions about harvard website references.

Blog posts and online newspaper articles are both referenced in the same format: include the title of the article in quotation marks, the name of the blog or newspaper in italics, and the date of publication.

The format for a magazine article is slightly different. Instead of a precise date, include the month, season, or volume and issue number, depending on what the magazine uses to identify its issues.

The URL and access date information are included only when the article is online-exclusive.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

To reference posts from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, include the username and the platform in square brackets. Write usernames the way they appear on the platform, with the same capitalization and symbols.

If the post has a title, use it (in quotation marks). If the post is untitled, use the text of the post instead. Do not use italics. If the text is long, you can replace some of it with an ellipsis.

Online content is referenced differently if it is in video, audio or image form.

To cite an image found online, such as an artwork, photograph, or infographic, include the image format (e.g. ‘Photograph’, ‘Oil on canvas’) in square brackets.

Online videos, such as those on YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo and Dailymotion, are cited similarly to general web pages. Where a video is uploaded under the name of an individual, write the name in the usual format. Otherwise, write the username of the uploader as it appears on the site.

If you want to locate a specific point in a video in an in-text citation, you can do so using a timestamp.

For a podcast reference, you just need the name of the individual episode, not of the whole series. The word ‘Podcast’ is always included in square brackets. As with videos, you can use a timestamp to locate a specific point in the in-text citation.

Online sources are often missing information you would usually need for a citation: author, title or date. Here’s what to do when these details are not available.

When a website doesn’t list a specific individual author, you can usually find a corporate author to list instead. This is the organisation responsible for the source:

In cases where there’s no suitable corporate author (such as online dictionaries or Wikis), use the title of the source in the author position instead:

In Harvard style, when a source doesn’t list a specific date of publication, replace it with the words ‘no date’ in both the in-text citation and the reference list. You should still include an access date:

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It’s important to assess the reliability of information found online. Look for sources from established publications and institutions with expertise (e.g. peer-reviewed journals and government agencies).

The CRAAP test (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose) can aid you in assessing sources, as can our list of credible sources . You should generally avoid citing websites like Wikipedia that can be edited by anyone – instead, look for the original source of the information in the “References” section.

You can generally omit page numbers in your in-text citations of online sources which don’t have them. But when you quote or paraphrase a specific passage from a particularly long online source, it’s useful to find an alternate location marker.

For text-based sources, you can use paragraph numbers (e.g. ‘para. 4’) or headings (e.g. ‘under “Methodology”’). With video or audio sources, use a timestamp (e.g. ‘10:15’).

In Harvard referencing, up to three author names are included in an in-text citation or reference list entry. When there are four or more authors, include only the first, followed by ‘ et al. ’

A Harvard in-text citation should appear in brackets every time you quote, paraphrase, or refer to information from a source.

The citation can appear immediately after the quotation or paraphrase, or at the end of the sentence. If you’re quoting, place the citation outside of the quotation marks but before any other punctuation like a comma or full stop.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2022, November 07). Reference a Website in Harvard Style | Templates & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 29 August 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/referencing/harvard-website-reference/

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Harvard Style & Format: A 5-Minute Guide + Samples

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The Harvard referencing style is a widely used system for citing and referencing sources in academic writing. It provides a consistent and standardized format for acknowledging the works of others that you have used in your research.

Struggling to remember tricky peculiarities of Harvard style referencing and formatting? Don’t worry, you have come across a helpful material. In this article, you will find the basics of Harvard style formatting which would be useful for your academic progress. This easy but detailed Harvard style guide contains all format requirements for a paper and some structural tips. Besides, it covers general rules on how to cite your sources properly in your text. Feel free to use these guidelines for your academic endeavors. Let us go through details of Harvard style referencing and formatting together!  

Reference Harvard Style: Basics

Harvard style is an author-date system of referencing. It’s similar to an  APA paper format  in terms of general formatting of pages and text. But this style follows its own rules for bibliography and in-text citations formatting. Harvard style is typically used for essays in such academic disciplines:  

• Behavioral Sciences
• Philosophy.

But this doesn’t mean you can’t use this paper format in other areas of study. The general rule is to put references to your sources in round brackets. Specify author’s name and publication year. These references should come after your quotes (direct or indirect) in the end of a respective sentence or paragraph. Full details about all sources you have used should be provided at the end of your work. This section should be named ‘Reference List’. Buy coursework or any other type of research paper that will be referenced for you by our experts. 

Harvard Format: General Requirements

Let us explore some general rules for Harvard formatting:

• Font: Times New Roman or Arial
• Size: 12 pt
• Text: double-spaced and left-aligned
• Indent: first line of a paragraph has indent of 0.5 inch
• Margins: 1 inch from each side

A Harvard style citation  must have a Title page, header (or running head), headings and Reference list. We will take a closer look at formatting each section down below.  

Harvard Style Title Page

What are the requirements for a Harvard style cover page? Title page is otherwise known as front page. This is the first page of your paper to be observed by your reader, i.e. your teacher first of all. Therefore, it is highly important to format it properly. Formatting rules for Harvard Title page:  

• Paper title is fully capitalised and centered. Should be placed at approximately 33% of your page counting from its top.
• Your name as an author, centered and placed at the middle of your page.
• Course name at approximately 66% of the page.
• Instructor’s name on a new line.
• University’s name.
• Submission date.

See the sample of a Harvard title page down below.

Formatting a Header in Harvard

An important detail: you are required to use a header in  Harvard referencing  format. This section is repeatedly shown on all pages of your paper except the title page. You have to configure it once. Then, headers will get automatically added on each new page. Headers in Harvard referencing format contains such information:  

• Page number, right aligned
• Shortened title of your paper, not capitalized, right-aligned, to the left of page number.

It is important to use shortened title because there is not too much space in any header. Also, another requirement is putting exactly 5 spaces between your title and a page number in headers.

Harvard Style Heading

Now let us explore some rules of using subheadings in Harvard style, in detail. Typically there are 2 levels of section headings recommended for use in such papers. They have different formatting. This helps to tell one from another, without using different font sizes for them.

• Level-1 subheadings for a bigger section. They must be centered, capitalized, but at the same time not indented, not bold, not underscored, not italicized.
• Level-2 subheading for any subsection, typically 1-2 paragraphs. They must be capitalized, left-aligned, not indented. Besides, they should be italicized.

The plain text of any paragraph should go on a new line after subheadings in Harvard style, be it Level-1 or Level-2 subheading.

Harvard Reference List

Listing all sources you have used for your research in a proper order is a core element of Harvard style. Reference list should be the last part of your paper but absolutely not the least. Now let us explore some critical rules for a reference list formatting. The Harvard-style reference list section has its own subtitle, namely ‘Reference List’. Similarly to a Level-1 subheading, it should be capitalized and centered. The rest of your content in this section goes from a new line after your title. No extra empty lines are to be added. Your references in this list are numbered and sorted alphabetically. No lines are indented. Each item in this list starts from a new line. Below we will describe a format for referencing in detail.  

Harvard Style Bibliography

Sometimes your professor or instructor might ask you to create a Bibliography section instead of a common Reference list. So what is the Harvard Bibliography format? Harvard style bibliography includes not only those sources you have cited in your text but also. It also includes materials which you have read to get ideas for your research and to better understand the context of a selected problem. So, such section would contain more items than a Reference list. Apart of that, the general Harvard Bibliography format is the same:  

• Heading, ‘Bibliography’ is formatted the same way as a Level-1 subheading
• Sources are put into alphabetical order
• List is double-spaced
• Lines do not have any indent
• Each item of this list starts from a new line.

Harvard Style Citations: General Rules

Another crucial element of Harvard style is referring to your sources inside your essay. That’s why you should know how to cite in Harvard style. Keep in mind that the main purpose of a proper format is to ensure your paper is plagiarizm-free. Sometimes, you should cite ideas from books, magazines or newspapers. But you can only refer to such ideas, otherwise it will be considered a form of plagiarism. Below we will show you how to cite in Harvard style, providing general information about published sources. So let us proceed and learn more about shortened quotes and full references.  

How to Quote in Harvard Style

Here are the rules of Harvard format in-text citation:

• Add them in parentheses, usually at the end of quotes.
• Put an author’s last name and a publication year into round brackets, add page number if needed.

• When quoting a web page, give a paragraph number instead of a page since many websites don’t divide text into pages.
• Direct citation requires quotation marks and a page number is mandatory in parenthesis
• If you have mentioned an author’s name in your quote, do not include it into brackets, just leave a year and a page numbers there.

• Sometimes you might need to quote two different sources at once. In such case include both into the same parenthesis and divide them by a semicolon.

Creating References in Harvard Style

And this is how you should be referencing in Harvard style, providing full descriptions of the sources you have used. Let us start with the general book format:

• Last name of the author followed by comma and initials
• If there are multiple authors, their names are separated with comma, except the last one which must be separated by ‘&’
• Year of publication follows, without a comma
• A full title of the book is given, italicized
• Publisher name
• City and country where this book was published are the last to be provided.

Here are several Harvarvard referencing rules for other source types:

• Refer to an edited book by putting ‘(ed.)’ or ‘(eds)’ after the editor name(s)
• If a book was translated, add ‘trans. I Lastname’
• Refer to an article in any book or journal by adding an article name in quotation marks but not italicized
• Refer to a website by adding ‘viewed’ and the date when you’ve opened it, followed by the URL in angle brackets.

Bottom Line

In this article we have explored the Harvard referencing guide, one of the most popular ones for students in the UK. Feel free to use these tips and proceed to writing a winning essay with flawless formatting! Just keep in mind the following key concepts of the Harvard style:

• Title or cover page
• Headers and their contents
• Subheadings of two levels with different formatting
• Reference list with full-detailed description of sources
• In-text citations with lots of different forms for various quote types.

In conclusion, consider our  custom term paper writing solution if you lack the time or got into writer's block.

If you have questions, please visit our FAQ section or contact our expert writers. They will gladly help you create references in line with all requirements. On top of that, our writers are highly experienced in academic writing and can assist you with any type of formatting.  

FAQ About Harvard Format

1. is harvard reference style used in colleges.

The Harvard style can be used in colleges as well as in other educational institutions and even by professional researchers. While it is relatively popular in many countries for research paper referencing, Harvard style is most widespread in universities of the UK nowadays. Other styles (APA, MLA and Chicago) dominate the US educational institutions.

2. What is the difference between Harvard and Oxford referencing styles?

The Harvard style format is a typical example of an author-date system as it requires using author’s names and publication dates for in-text referencing. You should create a complete reference list as a separate section in the end of your research paper. The Oxford style on the contrary uses numbered footnotes for citing sources used on your page. In-text citations on this page consist just from numbers of respective notes.  

Emma Flores knows all about formatting standards. She shares with StudyCrumb readers tips on creating academic papers that will meet high-quality standards.

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What is the Harvard Referencing System?

The Harvard citation style is a system that students, writers and researchers can use to incorporate other people’s quotes, findings and ideas into their work in order to support and validate their conclusions without breaching any intellectual property laws. The popular format is typically used in assignments and publications for humanities as well as natural, social and behavioural sciences.

It is a parenthetical referencing system that is made up of two main components:

• In-text citations including the author’s surname and the year of publication should be shown in brackets wherever another source has contributed to your work
• A reference list outlining all of the sources directly cited in your work

While in-text citations are used to briefly indicate where you have directly quoted or paraphrased a source, your reference list is an alphabetized list of complete Harvard citations that enables your reader to locate each source with ease. Each entry should be keyed to a corresponding parenthetical citation in the main body of your work, so that a reader can take an in-text citation and quickly retrieve the source from your reference list.

Note that some universities, and certain disciplines, may also require you to provide a bibliography. This is a detailed list of all of the material you have consulted throughout your research and preparation, and it will demonstrate the lengths you have gone to in researching your chosen topic.

‘Harvard referencing’ is an umbrella term for any referencing style that uses the author name and year of publication within the text to indicate where you have inserted a source. This author-date system appeals to both authors and readers of academic work. Scholars find the format an economical way of writing, and it is generally more accessible to the reader as there are no footnotes crowding the page. Only the name of the author, the publication date of the source and, if necessary, the page numbers are included in the parenthetical citations, for example: (Joyce, 2008).

Use the Cite This For Me Harvard style referencing generator to create your fully-formatted in-text references and reference list in the blink of an eye. Stop giving yourself extra pain and work for no reason and sign up to Cite This For Me today – your only regret will be that you didn’t use our citation generator sooner!

Popular Harvard Referencing Examples

• Chapter of a book
• Conference proceedings 
• Court case 
• Dissertation 
• Encyclopedia article 
• Image online or video
• Presentation or lecture
• Video, film, or DVD

Cite This For Me Harvard Referencing Guide

The following guide provides you with everything you need to know to do justice to all your hard work and get a mark that reflects those sleepless nights. If you’re not sure how to format your Harvard style citations, what citations are, or are simply curious about the Cite This For Me citation generator, our guide will answer all of your questions while offering you a comprehensive introduction to the style. Keep reading to find out why you need to use a referencing system, how to add citations in the body of your assignment, and how to compile a reference list.

Sometimes, students do not encounter citing until they embark on to degree-level studies, yet it is a crucial academic skill that will propel you towards establishing yourself in the academic community. It’s a common mistake to leave citing and creating a complete and accurate bibliography until the very last minute, but with the Cite This For Me Harvard referencing generator you can cite-as-you-go.

So, if you need a helping hand with your referencing then why not try Cite This For Me’s automated citation generator ? The generator accesses knowledge from across the web, assembling all of the relevant information into a fully-formatted reference list that clearly presents all of the sources that have contributed to your work. Using this Harvard reference generator to cite your sources enables you to cross the finishing line in style.

It is important to bear in mind that there is a plethora of different citation styles out there – the use of any particular one depends on the preference of your college, subject, professor or the publication you are submitting the work to. If you’re unsure which style you should be using, consult your tutor and follow their guidelines. If your lecturer or department does not ask you to use a particular style, we recommend using the Harvard referencing system because it is simple to use and easy to learn.

The powerful citation generator above can auto-generate citations in 7,000+ styles. So, whether your professor prefers that you use the MLA format , or your discipline requires you to adopt the APA citation or Chicago citation style , we have the style you need. Cite This For Me also provides citation generators and handy style guides for styles such as ASA , AMA or IEEE . To accurately create citations in a specific format, simply sign up to Cite This For Me for free and select your chosen style.

Are you struggling with citing an unfamiliar source type? Or feeling confused about whether to cite a piece of common knowledge? This guide will tell you everything you need to know to get both your parenthetical Harvard citations and reference list completed quickly and accurately.

Why Do I Need to Cite?

Harvard referencing can be a confusing task, especially if you are new to the concept, but it’s absolutely essential. In fact, accurate and complete referencing can mean the difference between reaching your academic goals and damaging your reputation amongst scholars. Simply put – referencing is the citing of sources you have utilised to support your essay, research, conference or article, etc.

Even if you are using our Harvard style citation generator, understanding why you need to cite will go a long way in helping you to naturally integrate the process into your research and writing routine.

Firstly, whenever another source contributes to your work you must give the original author the appropriate credit in order to avoid plagiarism, even when you have completely reworded the information. The only exception to this rule is common knowledge – e.g., Brazil is a country in South America. While plagiarism is not always intentional, it is easy to accidentally plagiarize your work when you are under pressure from imminent deadlines, you have managed your time ineffectively, or if you lack confidence when putting ideas into your own words. The consequences can be severe; deduction of marks at best, expulsion from college or legal action from the original author at worst. Find out more here.

This may sound overwhelming, but using our Harvard citation generator can help you avoid plagiarism and carry out your research and written work thoughtfully and responsibly. We have compiled a handy checklist to follow while you are working on an assignment.

How to avoid plagiarism:

• Formulate a detailed plan – carefully outline both the relevant content you need to include, as well as how you plan on structuring your work
• Keep track of your sources – record all of the relevant publication information as you go (e.g., If you are citing a book you should note the author or editor’s name(s), year of publication, title, edition number, city of publication and name of publisher). Carefully save each quote, word-for-word, and place it in inverted commas to differentiate it from your own words. Tired of interrupting your workflow to cite? Use our Harvard referencing generator to automate the process.
• Manage your time effectively – make use of time plans and targets, and give yourself enough time to read, write and proofread
• When you are paraphrasing information, make sure that you use only your own words and a sentence structure that differs from the original text
• Every quote or paraphrase should have a corresponding reference in the text. In addition, a full reference is needed on the final page of the project.
• Save all of your research and citations in a safe place – organise and manage your Harvard style citations

If you carefully check your college or publisher’s advice and guidelines on citing and stick to this checklist, you should be confident that you will not be accused of plagiarism.

Secondly, proving that your writing is informed by appropriate academic reading will enhance your work’s authenticity. Academic writing values original thought that analyzes and builds upon the ideas of other scholars. It is therefore important to use Harvard style referencing to accurately signpost where you have used someone else’s ideas in order to show that your writing is based on knowledge and informed by appropriate academic reading. Citing your sources will demonstrate to your reader that you have delved deeply into your chosen topic and supported your thesis with expert opinions.

Here at Cite This For Me we understand how precious your time is, which is why we created our Harvard citation generator and guide to help relieve the unnecessary stress of citing. Escape assignment-hell and give yourself more time to focus on the content of your work by using the Cite This For Me citation management tool.

Harvard Referencing Guidelines by School

• Anglia University Harvard Referencing
• Anglia Ruskin University
• Bath University
• Bournemouth University Harvard Referencing
• Cape Peninsula University of Technology
• Cardiff University Harvard Referencing
• City University London
• Coventry University Harvard Referencing
• Cranfield Harvard
• DMU Harvard Referencing
• Durham University Business School
• Edge Hill University Harvard Referencing
• European Archaeology
• Imperial College University Harvard Referencing
• Institute of Physics
• Leeds University Harvard Referencing
• King’s College London
• LSBU Harvard Referencing
• Manchester Business School
• MMU Harvard Referencing
• Newcastle University
• Northwest University
• Oxford Brookes University
• Oxford Centre for Mission Studies
• SHU Harvard Referencing
• Staffordshire University Harvard Referencing
• Swinburne University of Technology
• The Open University
• UCA Harvard Referencing
• University of Abertay Dundee
• University of Birmingham
• University of Cape Town
• University of Gloucestershire
• University of Greenwich Harvard
• University of Hull
• University of Kent – Harvard
• University of Limerick
• University of Melbourne
• University of Northampton
• University of Sunderland
• University of Technology, Sydney
• University of West London
• UWE Harvard Referencing
• UWS Harvard Referencing
• Wolverhampton University Harvard Referencing
• York University

How Do I Create and Format In-text Harvard Style Citations?

In-text citations are the perfect way to seamlessly integrate sources into your work, allowing you to strengthen the connection between your own ideas, and the source material that you have found, with ease. It is worth noting that in-text citations must be included in your assignment’s final word count.

When adopting Harvard style referencing in your work, if you are inserting a quote, statement, statistic or any other kind of source information into the main body of your essay you should:

• Provide the author’s surname and date of publication in parentheses right after the taken information or at the end of the sentence

There are many assumptions when it comes to the information processing approach to cognition… (Lutz and Huitt, 2004).

• If you have already mentioned the author in the sentence, Harvard referencing guidelines require you to only enter the year of publication in parentheses, directly after where the author’s surname is mentioned.

In the overview of these developmental theories, Lutz and Huitt (2004) suggest that…

• If you are quoting a particular section of the source (rather than the entire work), you should also include a page number, or page range, after the date, within the parenthetical Harvard citation

“…the development of meaning is more important than the acquisition of a large set of knowledge or skills …” (Lutz and Huitt, 2004, p.8), which means that …

• Note that if the source has four or more authors, you do not need to write out all of their surnames; simply use the first author’s surname followed by the abbreviation ‘et al.’ (meaning ‘and others’).

The results showed that respondents needed to reach out to multiple health agencies in order to cover the costs of their services (Wolbeck Minke et al., 2007).

• If you are reading a source by one author and they cite work by another author, you may cite that original work as a secondary reference. You are encouraged to track down the original source – usually this is possible to do by consulting the author’s reference list – but if you are unable to access it, the Harvard referencing guidelines state that you must only cite the source you did consult as you did not actually read the original document. Include the words ‘cited in’ in the in-text citation to indicate this.

Fong’s 1987 study (cited in Bertram 1997) found that older students’ memory can be as good as that of young people…

(Fong, cited in Bertram 1997)

Why use a Harvard referencing tool? As well as saving you valuable time, the Cite This For Me generator can help you easily avoid common errors when formatting your in-text citations. So, if you’re looking for an easy way to credit your source material, simply login to your Cite This For Me account to copy, save and export each in-text Harvard citation.

How Do I Format My Reference List?

Utilizing and building on a wide range of relevant sources is one way of impressing your reader, and a comprehensive list of the source material you have used is the perfect platform to exhibit your research efforts. A reference list is always required when you cite other people’s work within your assignment, and the brief in-text Harvard style citations in your work should directly link to your reference list.

As a general rule a reference list includes every source that you have cited in your work, while a bibliography also contains any relevant background reading which you have consulted to familiarise yourself with the topic (even those sources that are never mentioned in the narrative). Your Harvard referencing bibliography should start on its own page, with the same formatting as the rest of the paper and aligned to the left with the sources listed alphabetically. Certain fields ask you to provide an annotated bibliography that includes your full citations with the addition of notes. These notes are added to further analyze the source, and can be of any length.

Many people use the terms ‘reference list’ and ‘bibliography’ interchangeably, and if you are using the Harvard reference style you may be required to provide a bibliography as well as a reference list, so be sure to check this with your tutor.

Follow these guidelines when compiling your reference list:

• Start your reference list on a new page at the end of your document
• General formatting should be in keeping with the rest of your work
• Use ‘Reference List’ as the heading
• Copy each of your full-length Harvard citations into a list
• Arrange the list in alphabetical order by the author’s last name (titles with no author are alphabetized by the work’s title, and if you are citing two or more sources by the same author they should be listed in chronological order of the year of publication)
• When there are several works from one author or source, they should be listed together but in date order – with the earliest work listed first
• Italicize titles of books, reports, conference proceedings etc. For journal articles, the title of the journal should be printed in italics, rather than the title of the journal article
• Capitalize the first letter of the publication title, the first letters of all main words in the title of a journal, and all first letters of a place name and publisher

Creating and managing your reference list with the Cite This For Me Harvard referencing generator will help improve the way you reference and conduct research.

Reference list / bibliography examples:

• Book, one author:

Bell, J. (2010) Doing your research project . 5th edn. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

• One author, book, multiple editions:

Hawking, S.W. (1998) A brief history of time: From the big bang to black holes . 10th edn. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.

• Chapter in an edited book:

Jewsiewicki, B. (2010). ‘Historical Memory and Representation of New Nations in Africa’, in Diawara, M., Lategan, B., and Rusen, J. (eds.) Historical memory in Africa: Dealing with the past, reaching for the future in an intercultural context . New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 53-66.

If all information resembles a book, use the template for a book reference

If a page number is unavailable, use chapter number. URL links are not necessary, but can be useful. When including a URL, include the date the book was downloaded at the end of the Harvard citation:

Available at: URL (Downloaded: DD Month YYYY)

• More than three authors, journal article*:

Shakoor, J., et al. (2011) ‘A prospective longitudinal study of children’s theory of mind and adolescent involvement in bullying’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry , 53(3), pp. 254–261. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2011.02488.x.

• Conference papers:

Drogen, E. (2014) ‘Changing how we think about war: The role of psychology’, The British Psychological Society 2014 Annual Conference . The ICC, Birmingham British Psychological Society, 07-09 May 2014.

• Web page, by an individual:

Moon, M. (2019) Ubisoft put an official video game design course inside a video game . Available at https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/25/ubisoft-video-game-design-course/ (Accessed 19 November 2019).

• Web page, by a company or organization:

RotoBaller (2019) NFL player news . Available at https://www.rotoballer.com/player-news?sport=nfl (Accessed 17 September 2019).

For both types of web page references, the date the page was published or updated is placed in parentheses immediately following the author information. If a date is missing from the source, place (no date) next to the author’s name and make sure to include an accessed date at the end of the reference.

Are you struggling to find all of the publication information to complete a reference? Did you know that our Harvard citation generator can help you?

Time is of the essence when you’re finishing a paper, but there’s no need to panic because you can compile your reference list in a matter of seconds using the Cite This For Me Harvard style citation generator. Sign in to your Cite This For Me account to save and export your reference list.

Harvard Referencing Formatting Guidelines

Accurate referencing doesn’t only protect your work from plagiarism – presenting your source material in a consistent and clear way also enhances the readability of your work. Closely follow the style’s formatting rules on font type, font size, text-alignment and line spacing to ensure that your work is easily legible. Before submitting your work check that you have formatted your whole paper – including your reference list – according to the style’s formatting guidelines.

How to format in Harvard referencing:

• Margins: 2.5cm on all sides
• Shortened title followed by the page number in the header, aligned to the right
• Double-space the entirety of the paper
• ½ inch indentation for every new paragraph (press tab bar)
• Suggested fonts: Times New Roman, Arial and Courier New for Windows; Times New Roman, Helvetica and Courier for Mac, 12pt size. Ensure that all Harvard citations are in the same font as the rest of the work
• Reference list on a separate page at the end of the body of your work

Even when using a Harvard citation generator, always check with your professor for specified guidelines – there is no unified style for the formatting of a paper. Make sure that you apply the recommended formatting rules consistently throughout your work.

A Brief History of the Harvard Reference Style

The author-date system is attributed to eminent zoologist Edward Laurens Mark (1847-1946), Hersey professor of anatomy and director of Harvard’s zoological laboratory. It is widely agreed that the first evidence of Harvard referencing can be traced back to Mark’s landmark cytological paper (Chernin, 1988). The paper breaks away from previous uses of inconsistent and makeshift footnotes through its use of a parenthetical author-date citation accompanied by an explanatory footnote.

• Parenthetic author-year citation, page 194 of Mark’s 1881 paper:

[…] The appearance may be due solely to reflection from the body itself. (Comp. Flemming, ‘78b, p. 310.*)

• Mark’s rationale for his Harvard citational scheme:

*The numbers immediately following an author’s name serve the double purpose of referring the reader to the list (p. 591) where the titles of papers are given, and of informing him at once of the approximate date of the paper in question.

A tribute dedicated to Mark in 1903 by 140 students credits Mark’s paper with having ‘introduced into zoology a proper fullness and accuracy of citation and a convenient and uniform method of referring from text to bibliography’ (Parker, 1903). Today Harvard referencing is widely considered one of the most accessible styles and, although it originated in biology, these days it is used across most subjects – particularly in the humanities, history and social science.

The Evolution of the Harvard Referencing Style

Due to its simplicity and ease of use, the format has become one of the most widely used citation styles in the world. Unlike many citing styles there is no official manual, but institutions such as colleges offer their own unique Harvard reference style guide, and each has its own nuances when it comes to punctuation, order of information and formatting rules. Simply go to the Cite This For Me website to login to your Cite This For Me account and search for the version you need. Make sure you apply consistency throughout your work.

It is increasingly easy for writers to access information and knowledge via the internet, and in turn both the style’s guidelines and our citation generator are continually updated to include developments in electronic publishing. The Cite This For Me Harvard style citation generator currently uses the Cite Them Right 10th Edition, which has evolved in recent years to match the rapidly advancing digital age. In order to avoid plagiarism, you must be cautious about pulling information from the internet, and ensure that you accurately cite all source material used in your written work – including all online sources that have contributed to your research.

Key differences from previous Harvard referencing Cite Them Right editions:

• Previous editions required printed books and eBooks to be referenced differently – in the 10th edition, both are now referenced using the same template (if all the necessary information is available). An Ebook is considered to be the digital format of a published book (or a book that is only published in digital format) that is meant for reading on an electronic device.
• URLs are no longer a requirement for digital media if the information provided in the Harvard citation is sufficient to find the source without it. They should be included if the source is difficult to find, or pieces of source information – such as an author name – are missing.
• When a source has more than 3 authors, use the abbreviation “et al.” instead of listing each out.

These days students draw on a diverse range of digital sources to support their written work. Whether you are citing a hashtag on Instagram , a podcast or a mobile app, the Cite This For Me generator will take care of your Harvard citations, regardless of the type of source you want to cite. So don’t be held back by sources that are difficult to cite – locating unusual source material will help your work to stand out from the crowd.

How Do I Create Accurate Harvard Citations?

Creating complete and correctly formatted citations can be a challenge for many writers, especially when documenting multiple source types. Our primary goal at Cite This For Me is to offer support to students and researchers across the globe by transforming the way in which they perceive citing. We hope that after using our citation generator and reading this Harvard referencing guide, what was once considered an arduous process, will be viewed as a highly-valued skill that enhances the quality of your work.

Disheartened by the stressful process of citing? Got a fast-approaching deadline? Using the Cite This For Me fast, accessible and free generator makes creating accurate citations easier than ever, leaving more time for you to focus on achieving your academic goals.

Create a free account to add and edit each Harvard citation on the spot, import and export full projects or individual entries. Things get even easier with Cite This For Me for Chrome – an intuitive, handy browser extension that allows you to create and edit a citation while you browse the web. Use the extension on any webpage that you want to cite, and add it to your chosen project without interrupting your workflow.

The Cite This For Me citation management tool is here to help you, so what are you waiting for? Accurate Harvard citations are just a click away!

Reference List

Chernin, E. (1988) The ‘Harvard System’: A mystery dispelled. Available at: http://www.uefap.com/writing/referenc/harvard.pdf (Accessed: 4 July 2016).

Parker, G. (ed.) (1903) Mark anniversary volume. New York: Henry Holt.

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Academic Referencing: How to Cite a Research Paper

Learning how to conduct accurate, discipline-specific academic research can feel daunting at first. But, with a solid understanding of the reasoning behind why we use academic citations coupled with knowledge of the basics, you’ll learn how to cite sources with accuracy and confidence.

When it comes to academic research, citing sources correctly is arguably as important as the research itself. "Your instructors are expecting your work to adhere to these professional standards," said Amanda Girard , research support manager of Shapiro Library at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU).

With Shapiro Library for the past three years, Girard manages the library’s research support services, which includes SNHU’s 24/7 library chat and email support. She holds an undergraduate degree in professional writing and a graduate degree in library and information science. She said that accurate citations show that you have done your research on a topic and are knowledgeable about current ideas from those actively working in the field.

In other words, when you cite sources according to the academic style of your discipline, you’re giving credit where credit is due.

Why Cite Sources?

Citing sources properly ensures you’re following high academic and professional standards for integrity and ethics.

“When you cite a source, you can ethically use others’ research. If you are not adequately citing the information you claim in your work, it would be considered plagiarism ,” said Shannon Geary '16 , peer tutor at SNHU.

Geary has an undergraduate degree in communication  from SNHU and has served on the academic support team for close to 2 years. Her job includes helping students learn how to conduct research  and write academically.

“In academic writing, it is crucial to state where you are receiving your information from,” she said. “Citing your sources ensures that you are following academic integrity standards.”

According to Geary and Girard, several key reasons for citing sources are:

• Access. Citing sources points readers to original sources. If anyone wants to read more on your topic, they can use your citations as a roadmap to access the original sources.
• Attribution. Crediting the original authors, researchers and experts  shows that you’re knowledgeable about current ideas from those actively working in the field and adhering to high ethical standards, said Girard.
• Clarity. “By citing your sources correctly, your reader can follow along with your research,” Girard said.
• Consistency. Adhering to a citation style provides a framework for presenting ideas within similar academic fields. “Consistent formatting makes accessing, understanding and evaluating an author's findings easier for others in related fields of study,” Geary said.
• Credibility. Proper citation not only builds a writer's authority but also ensures the reliability of the work, according to Geary.

Ultimately, citing sources is a formalized way for you to share ideas as part of a bigger conversation among others in your field. It’s a way to build off of and reference one another’s ideas, Girard said.

How Do You Cite an Academic Research Paper?

Any time you use an original quote or paraphrase someone else’s ideas, you need to cite that material, according to Geary.

“The only time we do not need to cite is when presenting an original thought or general knowledge,” she said.

While the specific format for citing sources can vary based on the style used, several key elements are always included, according to Girard. Those are:

• Title of source
• Type of source, such as a journal, book, website or periodical

By giving credit to the authors, researchers and experts you cite, you’re building credibility. You’re showing that your argument is built on solid research.

“Proper citation not only builds a writer's authority but also ensures the reliability of the work,” Geary said. “Properly formatted citations are a roadmap for instructors and other readers to verify the information we present in our work.”

Common Citation Styles in Academic Research

Certain disciplines adhere to specific citation standards because different disciplines prioritize certain information and research styles . The most common citation styles used in academic research, according to Geary, are:

• American Psychological Association, known as APA . This style is standard in the social sciences such as psychology, education and communication. “In these fields, research happens rapidly, which makes it exceptionally important to use current research,” Geary said.
• Modern Language Association, known as MLA . This style is typically used in literature and humanities because of the emphasis on literature analysis. “When citing in MLA, there is an emphasis on the author and page number, allowing the audience to locate the original text that is being analyzed easily,” Geary said.
• Chicago Manual of Style, known as Chicago . This style is typically used in history, business and sometimes humanities. “(Chicago) offers flexibility because of the use of footnotes, which can be seen as less distracting than an in-text citation,” Geary said.

The benefit of using the same format as other researchers within a discipline is that the framework of presenting ideas allows you to “speak the same language,” according to Girard.

APA Citation for College: A Brief Overview

Are you writing a paper that needs to use APA citation, but don’t know what that means? No worries. You’ve come to the right place.

How to Use MLA Formatting: A Brief Overview

Are you writing a paper for which you need to know how to use MLA formatting, but don’t know what that means? No worries. You’ve come to the right place.

How to Ensure Proper Citations

Keeping track of your research as you go is one of the best ways to ensure you’re citing appropriately and correctly based on the style that your academic discipline uses.

“Through careful citation, authors ensure their audience can distinguish between borrowed material and original thoughts, safeguarding their academic reputation and following academic honesty policies,” Geary said.

Some tips that she and Girard shared to ensure you’re citing sources correctly include:

• Keep track of sources as you work. Writers should keep track of their sources every time an idea is not theirs, according to Geary. “You don’t want to find the perfect research study and misplace its source information, meaning you’d have to omit it from your paper,” she said.
• Practice. Even experienced writers need to check their citations before submitting their work. “Citing requires us to pay close attention to detail, so always start your citation process early and go slow to ensure you don’t make mistakes,” said Geary. In time, citing sources properly becomes faster and easier.
• Use an Online Tool . Geary recommends the Shapiro Library citation guide . You can find sample papers, examples of how to cite in the different academic styles and up-to-date citation requirements, along with information and examples for APA, MLA and Chicago style citations.
• Work with a Tutor. A tutor can offer support along with tips to help you learn the process of academic research. Students at SNHU can connect with free peer tutoring through the Academic Support tab in their online courses, though many colleges and universities offer peer tutoring.

Find Your Program

How to cite a reference in academic writing.

A citation consists of two pieces: an in-text citation that is typically short and a longer list of references or works cited (depending on the style used) at the end of the paper.

“In-text citations immediately acknowledge the use of external source information and its exact location,” Geary said. While each style uses a slightly different format for in-text citations that reference the research, you may expect to need the page number, author’s name and possibly date of publication in parentheses at the end of a sentence or passage, according to Geary.

A longer entry listing the complete details of the resource you referenced should also be included on the references or works cited page at the end of the paper. The full citation is provided with complete details of the source, such as author, title, publication date and more, Geary said.

The two-part aspect of citations is because of readability. “You can imagine how putting the full citation would break up the flow of a paper,” Girard said. “So, a shortened version is used (in the text).”

“For example, if an in-text citation reads (Jones, 2024), the reader immediately knows that the ideas presented are coming from Jones’s work, and they can explore the comprehensive citation on the final page,” she said.

The in-text citation and full citation together provide a transparent trail of the author's process of engaging with research.

“Their combined use also facilitates further research by following a standardized style (APA, MLA, Chicago), guaranteeing that other scholars can easily connect and build upon their work in the future,” Geary said.

Developing and demonstrating your research skills, enhancing your work’s credibility and engaging ethically with the intellectual contributions of others are at the core of the citation process no matter which style you use.

A degree can change your life. Choose your program  from 200+ SNHU degrees that can take you where you want to go.

A former higher education administrator, Dr. Marie Morganelli is a career educator and writer. She has taught and tutored composition, literature, and writing at all levels from middle school through graduate school. With two graduate degrees in English language and literature, her focus — whether teaching or writing — is in helping to raise the voices of others through the power of storytelling. Connect with her on LinkedIn .

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About southern new hampshire university.

SNHU is a nonprofit, accredited university with a mission to make high-quality education more accessible and affordable for everyone.

Founded in 1932, and online since 1995, we’ve helped countless students reach their goals with flexible, career-focused programs . Our 300-acre campus in Manchester, NH is home to over 3,000 students, and we serve over 135,000 students online. Visit our about SNHU  page to learn more about our mission, accreditations, leadership team, national recognitions and awards.

Harvard University Essay Examples (And Why They Worked)

The following essay examples were written by several different authors who were admitted to Harvard University and are intended to provide examples of successful Harvard University application essays. All names have been redacted for anonymity. Please note that Bullseye Admissions has shared these essays with admissions officers at Harvard University in order to deter potential plagiarism.

For more help with your Harvard supplemental essays, check out our 2020-2021 Harvard University Essay Guide ! For more guidance on personal essays and the college application process in general, sign up for a monthly plan to work with an admissions coach 1-on-1.

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (50-150 words)

Feet moving, eyes up, every shot back, chants the silent mantra in my head. The ball becomes a beacon of neon green as I dart forward and backward, shuffling from corner to far corner of the court, determined not to let a single point escape me. With bated breath, I swing my racquet upwards and outwards and it catches the ball just in time to propel it, spinning, over the net. My heart soars as my grinning teammates cheer from the sidelines.

While I greatly value the endurance, tenacity, and persistence that I have developed while playing tennis throughout the last four years, I will always most cherish the bonds that I have created and maintained each year with my team.

Why this Harvard essay worked: From an ex-admissions officer

When responding to short essays or supplements, it can be difficult to know which info to include or omit. In this essay, the writer wastes no time and immediately captivates the reader. Not only are the descriptions vivid and compelling, but the second portion highlights what the writer gained from this activity. As an admissions officer, I learned about the student’s level of commitment, leadership abilities, resiliency, ability to cooperate with others, and writing abilities in 150 words.

I founded Teen Court at [High School Name Redacted] with my older brother in 2016. Teen Court is a unique collaboration with the Los Angeles Superior Court and Probation Department, trying real first-time juvenile offenders from all over Los Angeles in a courtroom setting with teen jurors. Teen Court’s foundational principle is restorative justice: we seek to rehabilitate at-risk minors rather than simply punish them. My work provides my peers the opportunity to learn about the justice system. I put in over fifty hours just as Secretary logging court attendance, and now as President, I mentor Teen Court attendees. My goal is to improve their empathy and courage in public speaking, and to expand their world view. People routinely tell me their experience with Teen Court has inspired them to explore law, and I know the effort I devoted bringing this club to [High School Name Redacted] was well worth it.

This writer discussed a passion project with a long-lasting impact. As admissions officers, we realize that post-secondary education will likely change the trajectory of your life. We hope that your education will also inspire you to change the trajectory of someone else’s life as well. This writer developed an organization that will have far-reaching impacts for both the juvenile offenders and the attendees. They saw the need for this service and initiated a program to improve their community. College Admissions Quiz: If you’re planning on applying to Harvard, you’ll want to be as prepared as possible. Take our quiz below to put your college admissions knowledge to the test!

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: Books Read During the Last Twelve Months

Reading Frankenstein in ninth grade changed my relationship to classic literature. In Frankenstein , I found characters and issues that resonate in a modern context, and I began to explore the literary canon outside of the classroom. During tenth grade, I picked up Jane Eyre and fell in love with the novel’s non-traditional heroine whose agency and cleverness far surpassed anything that I would have imagined coming from the 19th century. I have read the books listed below in the past year.

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus *
• Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger *
• Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• Aphra Behn, The Fair Jilt ♰
• Mongo Beti, Mission Terminée * (in French)
• Kate Chopin, The Awakening
• Arthur Conan-Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
• Kamel Daoud, Meursault, contre-enquête * (in French)
• Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry *
• Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane *
• Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
• William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying *
• Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
• E. M. Forster, Maurice
• E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
• E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
• Eliza Haywood, The City Jilt ♰
• Homer, The Iliad
• Christopher Isherwood, All The Conspirators
• Christopher Isherwood, A Meeting by the River
• Christopher Isherwood, Sally Bowles
• Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
• Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
• Franz Kafka, The Trial
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies *
• Morrissey, Autobiography
• Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy *
• Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
• Charlotte Perkins-Gilman, Herland
• Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
• Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
• Mary Renault, Fire From Heaven
• Mary Renault, The Friendly Young Ladies
• Mary Renault, The King Must Die
• Mary Renault, The Persian Boy
• J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des hommes * (in French)
• Shakespeare, Hamlet *
• Mary Shelley, The Last Man
• Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead *
• Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
• Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
• Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
• Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
• Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
• Jeanette Winterson, The Passion
• Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary: A Fiction ♰
• Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman ♰
• Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House and Other Stories
• * indicates assigned reading
• ♰ indicates independent study reading

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: What would you want your future college roommate to know about you? (No word limit)

Hi Roomie!!!!

You probably have noticed that I put four exclamation points. Yes, I am that excited to meet you, roomie!

Also, I don’t believe in the Rule of Three. It’s completely unfair that three is always the most commonly used number. Am I biased in my feelings because four is my favorite number? Perhaps. However, you have to admit that our reason for the Rule of Three is kinda arbitrary. The Rule of Three states that a trio of events is more effective and satisfying than any other numbers. Still, the human psyche is easily manipulated through socially constructed perceptions such as beauty standards and gender roles. Is having three of everything actually influential or is it only influential because society says so? Hmm, it’s interesting to think about it, isn’t it?

But if you’re an avid follower of the Rule of three, don’t worry, I won’t judge. In fact, if there’s one thing I can promise you I will never do, it’s being judgmental. Life is too short to go around judging people. Besides, judgments are always based on socially constructed beliefs. With so many backgrounds present on campus, it really would be unfair if we start going around judging people based on our own limited beliefs. My personal philosophy is “Mind your own business and let people be,” So, if you have a quirk that you’re worrying is too “weird” and are afraid your roommate might be too judgy, rest assured, I won’t be.

In fact, thanks to my non-judginess, I am an excellent listener. If you ever need to rant with someone about stressful classes, harsh gradings, or the new ridiculous plot twists of your favorite TV show (*cough* Riverdale), I am always available.

Now, I know what you are thinking. A non-judgmental and open-minded roommate? This sounds too good to be true. This girl’s probably a secret villain waiting to hear all my deepest and darkest secrets and blackmail me with them!

Well, I promise you. I am not a secret villain. I am just someone who knows how important it is to be listened to and understood.

I grew up under the communist regime of Vietnam, where freedom of speech and thought was heavily suppressed. Since childhood, I was taught to keep my opinion to myself, especially if it is contradictory to the government’s. No matter how strongly I felt about an issue, I could never voice my true opinion nor do anything about it. Or else, my family and I would face oppression from the Vietnamese government.

After immigrating to America, I have made it my mission to fight for human rights and justice. Back in Vietnam, I have let fear keep me from doing the right thing. Now, in the land of freedom, I won’t use that excuse anymore. I can finally be myself and fight for what I believe in. However, I can still remember how suffocating it was to keep my beliefs bottled up and to be silenced. Trust me, a conversation may not seem much, but it can do wonders. So, if you ever need a listener, know that I am right here.

See, I just shared with you a deep secret of mine. What secret villain would do that?

See ya soon!!!!!

[Name redacted] : )

P/S: I really love writing postscripts. So, I hope you won’t find it weird when I always end my emails, letters, and even texts with a P/S. Bye for real this time!!!!!

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: Unusual circumstances in your life

I would like the Harvard Admissions Committee to know that my life circumstances are far from typical. I was born at twenty-four weeks gestation, which eighteen years ago was on the cusp of viability. Even if I was born today, under those same circumstances, my prospects for leading a normal life would be grim. Eighteen years ago, those odds were worse, and I was given a less than 5% chance of survival without suffering major cognitive and physical deficits.

The first six months of my life were spent in a large neonatal ICU in Canada. I spent most of that time in an incubator, kept breathing by a ventilator. When I was finally discharged home, it was with a feeding tube and oxygen, and it would be several more months before I was able to survive without the extra tubes connected to me. At the age of two, I was still unable to walk. I engaged in every conventional and non-conventional therapy available to me, including physical and speech therapy, massage therapy, gymnastics, and several nutritional plans, to try to remedy this. Slowly, I began to make progress in what would be a long and arduous journey towards recovery.

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of repeated, often unsuccessful attempts to grip a large-diameter crayon since I was unable to hold a regular pencil. I would attempt to scrawl out letters on a page to form words, fueled by either determination or outright stubbornness, persevering until I improved. I spent countless hours trying to control my gait, eventually learning to walk normally and proving the doctors wrong about their diagnoses. I also had to learn how to swallow without aspirating because the frequent intubations I had experienced as an infant left me with a uncoordinated swallow reflex. Perhaps most prominently, I remember becoming very winded as I tried to keep up with my elementary school peers on the playground and the frustration I experienced when I failed.

Little by little, my body’s tolerance for physical exertion grew, and my coordination improved. I enrolled in martial arts to learn how to keep my balance and to develop muscle coordination and an awareness of where my limbs were at any given time. I also became immersed in competition among my elementary school peers to determine which one of us could become the most accomplished on the recorder. For each piece of music played correctly, a “belt” was awarded in the form of a brightly colored piece of yarn tied around the bottom of our recorders- meant as symbols of our achievement. Despite the challenges I had in generating and controlling enough air, I practiced relentlessly, often going in before school or during my lunch hour to obtain the next increasingly difficult musical piece. By the time the competition concluded, I had broken the school record of how far an elementary school child could advance; in doing so, my love of instrumental music and my appreciation for the value of hard work and determination was born.

Throughout my middle and high school years, I have succeeded at the very highest level both academically and musically. I was even able to find a sport that I excelled at and would later be able to use as an avenue for helping others, volunteering as an assistant coach once I entered high school. I have mentored dozens of my high school peers in developing trumpet skills, teaching them how to control one’s breathing during musical phrases and how to develop effective fingering techniques in order to perform challenging passages. I believe that my positive attitude and hard work has allowed for not only my own success, but for the growth and success of my peers as well.

My scholastic and musical achievements, as well as my leadership abilities and potential to succeed at the highest level will hopefully be readily apparent to the committee when you review my application. Perhaps more importantly, however, is the behind-the-scenes character traits that have made these possible. I believe that I can conquer any challenge put in front of me. My past achievements provide testimony to my work ethic, aptitudes and grit, and are predictive of my future potential.

Thank you for your consideration.

In this essay, the writer highlighted their resilience. At some point, we will all endure challenges and struggles, but it is how we redeem ourselves that matters. This writer highlighted their initial struggles, their dedication and commitment, and the ways in which they’ve used those challenges as inspiration and motivation to persevere and also to encourage others to do the same.

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you.

I want to be a part of something amazing, and I believe I can. The first line of the chorus springs into my mind instantaneously as my fingers experiment with chords on the piano. In this moment, as I compose the protagonist’s solo number, I speak from my heart. I envision the stage and set, the actors, the orchestra, even the audience. Growing increasingly excited, I promptly begin to create recordings so I can release the music from the confines of my imagination and share it with any willing ears.

My brother [name redacted] and I are in the process of writing a full-length, two-act musical comprised of original scenes, songs, characters. I began creating the show not only because I love to write music and entertain my friends and family, but also with the hope that I might change the way my peers view society. Through Joan, the protagonist of my musical, I want to communicate how I feel about the world.

The story centers around Joan, a high schooler, and her connection to the pilot Amelia Earhart. Ever since I saw a theatrical rendition of Amelia Earhart’s life in fifth grade, she has fascinated me as an extraordinary feminist and a challenger of society’s beliefs and standards. As I began researching and writing for the show, I perused through biographies and clicked through countless youtube documentaries about the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, astounded by her bravery and ability to overcome a troubled childhood and achieve her dream. In my musical, as Amelia transcends 20th century norms, changing the way that people regard women and flight, Joan strives to convince her peers and superiors that the worth of one’s life spans not from material success and grades, but from self-love and passion.

As I compose, the essence of each character and the mood of each scene steer the flow of each song. To me, it seems as though everything falls into place at once – as I pluck a melody out of the air, the lyrics come to me naturally as if the two have been paired all along. As I listen to the newly born principal line, I hear the tremolo of strings underscoring and the blaring of a brass section that may someday audibly punctuate each musical phrase.

The project is certainly one of the most daunting tasks I’ve ever undertaken – we’ve been working on it for almost a year, and hope to be done by January – but, fueled by my passion for creating music and writing, it is also one of the most enjoyable. I dream that it may be performed one day and that it may influence society to appreciate the success that enthusiasm for one’s relationships and work can bring.

These essay examples were compiled by the advising team at Bullseye Admissions. If you want to get help writing your Harvard University application essays from Bullseye Admissions advisors , register with Bullseye today .

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APA Style is the most common writing style used in college and career. Its purpose is to promote excellence in communication by helping writers create clear, precise, and inclusive sentences with a straightforward scholarly tone. It addresses areas of writing such as how to

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High school students need to learn how to write concisely, precisely, and inclusively so that they are best prepared for college and career. Here are some of the reasons educators have chosen APA Style:

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Read the college essay a Harvard grad wrote about McDonald's that landed him offers from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton

• Cofounder of AI company Exa Jeffrey Wang wrote his college application essay about McDonald's.
• The Harvard graduate said he wanted to make his essay authentic and entertaining.
• Wang said he got into Yale, Harvard, and Princeton using the same essay.

When Jeffrey Wang was a high-school senior in Connecticut in 2014, he wasn't sure what to write about for his college application essay.

He thought about writing his essay on a subject he enjoyed at school or a project he'd worked on. But he knew others would have the same idea .

Wang told Business Insider he grew up in a middle-class family in the suburbs of Cheshire, CT. He felt he didn't have anything extraordinary to write about.

"I hadn't spent any summers abroad, and I hadn't done any fancy programs," he said.

He wanted to show his personality

He read Harry Bauld's book, 'On Writing the College Application Essay,' which made him realize college admissions officers wouldn't have time to read each essay diligently.

He said he realized his primary objective should be to entertain the admissions officer reading his essay .

"For the most part, they're just looking for character," Wang said. He decided to write about studying at McDonald's.

He told BI he thought it might pique an admissions officer's interest and illustrate his character: someone who did well at school but also hangs out at a McDonald's.

Wang said he also wanted to use his essay to challenge assumptions admissions officers might have. "I'm an Asian-American with a perfect SAT score. Maybe that looks pretty cookie-cutter on paper," he said.

Authenticity is key

The essay summarizes how Wang discovered his local McDonald's was an ideal place to study and meditate. He mentioned he liked interacting with different community members and how it was a more efficient and affordable study space than other options. The underpinning message is finding joy or peace in unusual places.

Related stories

"For the most part, it was a pretty authentic essay," Wang said, adding that he included a few "intellectual references," such as a novel and a physicist, to show the admissions officer he was smart. He said if he were to write it now, he'd leave out the big words and references.

His parents were worried the topic was too risky, but Wang said he felt confident, and if an admissions officer didn't like it — the school wasn't the right fit.

He got into Yale, Harvard, and Princeton

Growing up, Wang dreamed of attending Yale in his home state of Connecticut. He applied to Yale under early decision , using his essay about McDonald's.

Wang received an offer of financial aid from Yale, but he told BI he wanted to see if he could get more from other colleges.

He applied to Harvard, Duke, Princeton, MIT, and others with the same essay. He got into both Princeton and Harvard, and received offers of financial aid from them both. Business Insider has verified these offers with documentation.

Wang chose to study computer science at Harvard in 2015 because he said it was the best for STEM subjects, and he wanted to be further away from home.

He still tries to live authentically

Wang said if his friends read his essay now, 10 years after he submitted it, they'd recognize his personality in it. It shows his "scrappy" attitude to life, he said.

After graduating from Harvard in 2019, he started working as a software engineer for a tech company in San Francisco. He quit in 2022, and cofounded his startup Exa, a search engine for AI, in 2023.

Wang believes that prioritizing authenticity helped his success since college. "If you do things that you feel are authentic or that are right, you'll be rewarded for it," he said.

Do you have a college admissions success story? Email Ella Hopkins at [email protected] .

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Why Companies Should Embrace Disruptive Climate Activism

• Oliver Laasch
• Tessa Wernink

Most companies consider boundary-pushing activism to be a threat. But it can actually help future-proof your organization.

Most companies’ climate targets are inadequate responses to the climate emergency. And while many companies are falling behind or exaggerating progress, other companies are responding by dialing back on their goals altogether. Employees, peer businesses, and activists are responding in turn. More disruptive management and corporate practices are urgently needed to address the climate emergency. The authors argue that instead of criminalizing and marginalizing climate activists — citing examples like and Amazon and ExxonMobil — companies should promote disruptive activism for their own well-being and for the global good. They cite three successful practices as well as companies that have implemented each: supporting external disruptive activism, enabling internally disruptive activism, and competing to disrupt.

According to the global MSCI index’s April report , most companies’ climate targets are inadequate  responses to the climate emergency. The global transition to net zero carbon emissions is “unfolding in bursts,” and while more companies are voluntarily setting science-based climate targets and disclosing emissions, listed companies’ inadequate targets mean they will burn through their carbon budgets by July 2026.

• OL Oliver Laasch is a chaired professor of Responsible Management at ESCP Business School , a disruptive-subversive academic activist, best-selling author, founder of the Center for Responsible Management Education , and a pioneer of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education movement. He contributes to the “Don’t criminalize, act!” climate initiative and brings business students together with disruptive activists. He currently leads a research project asking climate activists about their demands for business management and serves as a facilitator in negotiations between radical climate activists and targeted businesses.
• TW Tessa Wernink is co-founder of Fairphone and the Amsterdam-based management consultancy thewholeworks . She is the host of the “What If We Get It Right?” podcast about the transformative power of social innovation and employee activism in companies. Through the Undercover Activist , she provides leadership training for employees and managers to become positive workplace activists who disruptively drive or support change — bottom-up and inside-out — around social and environmental issues within companies.

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Stochastic lies: How LLM-powered chatbots deal with Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine

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Research on digital misinformation has turned its attention to large language models (LLMs) and their handling of sensitive political topics. Through an AI audit, we analyze how three LLM-powered chatbots (Perplexity, Google Bard, and Bing Chat) generate content in response to the prompts linked to common Russian disinformation narratives about the war in Ukraine. We find major differences between chatbots in the accuracy of outputs and the integration of statements debunking Russian disinformation claims related to prompts’ topics. Moreover, we show that chatbot outputs are subject to substantive variation, which can result in random user exposure to false information.

Institute of Communication and Media Studies, University of Bern, Switzerland

Research Group “Platform Algorithms and Digital Propaganda,” Weizenbaum Institute, Germany

Research Questions

• Do LLM-powered chatbots generate false information in response to prompts related to the common Russian disinformation narratives about the war in Ukraine?
• Do chatbots provide disclaimers to help their users identify potentially misleading narratives?
• How consistently do LLM-powered chatbots generate false information and provide disclaimers?

Essay Summary

• To examine how chatbots respond to prompts linked to Russian disinformation, we audited three popular chatbots: Perplexity, Google Bard (a predecessor of Gemini), and Bing Chat (currently known as Copilot). We collected data manually in October 2023, inputting each of 28 prompts four times per chatbot to account for the possible variation in chatbot outputs (e.g., due to built-in stochasticity).
• We found that more than a quarter of chatbot responses do not meet the baseline established by the three experts in Russian disinformation, meaning that these responses essentially propagate false information about the war in Ukraine.
• Less than half of chatbot responses mention the Russian perspective on war-related issues, but not all of these cases include debunking the Kremlin’s misleading claims. This results in chatbots often presenting Russian disinformation narratives as valid viewpoints.
• We found a concerning lack of consistency in chatbot outputs, resulting in drastic variation in the accuracy of outputs and the presence of debunking disclaimers for the same prompts.
• Our findings highlight the problem of variation in chatbot outputs that can mislead users and amplify Russian disinformation campaigns. Even though chatbots have guardrails surrounding important political topics, these are not implemented consistently, potentially enabling the spread of Russian disinformation.

Implications

Automated content selection, filtering, and ranking systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI) have long been key elements of infrastructural affordances and business models of major online platforms, from search engines to social media (Poell et al., 2022). The recent developments in generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs) that are capable of not only retrieving existing information but also generating new types of textual content, have given new possibilities to platforms for satisfying user information needs. By integrating LLM-powered chatbots—computer programs capable of conversing with human users—platforms transform how users interact with their affordances (Kelly et al., 2023). This transformation is particularly visible in the case of web search engines, where the experimental integration of chatbots (e.g., Google Bard and Bing Chat) into the user interface is ongoing. Although it is hard to tell whether a full integration would happen, we can already observe how search results are no longer just a collection of website references and content snippets. Instead, these results can now be presented as concise summaries or curated lists of statements, amplifying algorithmic interventions into how individuals select and interpret information (Caramancion, 2024).   

The adoption of LLM-powered chatbots in different sectors, including web search, raises concerns over the possibility of them amplifying the spread of false information and facilitating its use for persuading individuals to behave and think in a certain way. Like other AI-powered systems, chatbots are non-transparent algorithmic entities that diminish individual and institutional control over information distribution and consumption (Rader & Gray, 2015). Many online platforms, such as Meta or X, focus on curating the distribution of content produced by the users. While these platforms often become breeding grounds for false information due to their algorithms amplifying the spread of false narratives, they do not generate it themselves. Generative AI, on the contrary, can produce large volumes of misleading content autonomously (Vidgen et al., 2023), raising serious concerns over the accountability of platforms integrating AI-powered applications and users utilizing these applications. Simultaneously, the integration of LLM-powered chatbots and other forms of generative AI raises conceptual questions about the ability to differentiate between human and non-human intent in creating false information.

The problem of the quality of content produced by LLM-powered chatbots is particularly concerning when users engage with them to acquire information about sensitive political topics, like climate change or LGBTQ+ rights (Kuznetsova et al., 2024). Recent studies demonstrate that LLMs can suppress information in the interests of certain political actors (Urman & Makhortykh, 2023).  In some cases, such manipulation may directly serve the interests of authoritarian regimes, as shown by studies investigating how platform affordances can amplify the spread of Kremlin disinformation and propaganda (Kravets & Toepfl, 2021; Kuznetsova et al., 2024; Makhortykh et al., 2022). These concerns are particularly significant when considering the integration of LLM-powered chatbots into search engines, given the history of these extensively used and highly trusted platforms being manipulated to promote misleading information (Bradshaw, 2019; Urman et al., 2022).

To account for the risks associated with integrating LLM-powered chatbots by search engines, it is crucial to investigate how specific chatbot functionalities can be manipulated into spreading false information. For example, Atkins et al. (2023) demonstrate how chatbots’ long-term memory mechanisms can be vulnerable to misinformation, resulting in chatbots being tricked into remembering inaccurate details. Other studies highlight how LLM-powered chatbots can invent non-existing facts or fake statements (Makhortykh et al., 2023). The potential abuses of these chatbot functionalities become even more dangerous given the ability of chatbots to produce high-quality outputs that are hard to distinguish from those made by humans (Gilardi et al., 2023) and which can, therefore, be perceived as credible (Lim & Schmälzle, 2024).

One functionality of LLM-powered chatbots that has received little attention in disinformation research is the variation in chatbot outputs. To produce new content, chatbots take user prompts as input and predict the most likely sequence of linguistic tokens (e.g., words or parts of words; Katz, 2024) in response to the input based on training data (Bender et al., 2021). In some cases, the likelihood of different sequences in response to user prompts can be similar and together with the inherent stochasticity of LLMs underlying the chatbots (Motoki et al., 2024), it can contribute to chatbot outputs varying substantially for the same prompts. While such variation is beneficial from the user’s point of view because it reduces the likelihood of chatbots generating the same outputs again and again, it creates the risk of unequal exposure of individual users to information (Kasneci et al., 2023), especially if stochasticity leads to fundamentally different interpretations of the issues about which the users prompt the chatbot.

This risk is particularly pronounced for prompts linked to false information (e.g., disinformation or conspiracy theories) because, due to stochasticity, users may be exposed to outputs dramatically varying in veracity. Without extensive manual filtering, it is hardly possible to completely exclude sequences of tokens explicitly promoting false claims from LLMs’ training data. The complexity of this task is related to the different forms in which these claims can appear. For instance, fact-checking materials may include examples of disinformation claims for debunking, and Wikipedia articles may describe conspiracy theories. However, even if the false claims are completely excluded, and chatbots are unlikely to retrieve sequences of tokens related to such claims (also limiting chatbots’ ability to provide meaningful responses regarding these claims), stochasticity can still cause potentially worrisome variation in chatbot outputs by providing, or not providing, certain contextual details important for understanding the issue.

Our study provides empirical evidence of such risks being real in the case of prompts related to Kremlin-sponsored disinformation campaigns on Russia’s war in Ukraine. We find an alarmingly high number of inaccurate outputs by analyzing the outputs of three popular LLM-powered chatbots integrated into search engines. Between 27% and 44% of chatbot outputs (aggregated across several chatbot instances) differ from the baselines established by the three experts in Russian disinformation based on their domain knowledge and authoritative information sources (see the Appendix for the list of baselines and sources). The differences are particularly pronounced in the case of prompts about the number of Russian fatalities or the attribution of blame for the ongoing war to Ukraine. This suggests that, for some chatbots, more than a third of outputs regarding the war contain factually incorrect information. Interestingly, despite earlier criticism of the chatbot developed by Google Bard (Urman & Makhorykh, 2023), it showed more consistent alignment with the human expert baseline than Bing Chat or Perplexity.

Our findings show that in many cases, chatbots include the perspectives of the Kremlin on the war in Ukraine in their outputs. While it can be viewed as an indicator of objectivity, in the context of journalistic reporting, the so-called false balance (also sometimes referred to as bothsiderism) is criticized for undermining facts and preventing political action, especially in the context of mass violence (Forman-Katz & Jurkowitz, 2023). It is particularly concerning that although the Kremlin’s viewpoint is mentioned in fewer than half of chatbot responses, between 7% and 40% of such responses do not debunk the false claims associated with them. Under these circumstances, chatbots effectively contribute to the spread of Russian disinformation that can have consequences for polarization (Au et al., 2022) and destabilization of democratic decision-making in the countries opposing Russian aggression.

Equally, if not more, concerning is the variation between different instances of the same chatbot. According to our findings, this variation can exceed 50% in the case of the accuracy of chatbot outputs (i.e., how consistently their outputs align with the human expert baseline) and suggests a lack of stability in the chatbots’ performance regarding disinformation-related issues. In other words, users interacting with the same chatbot may receive vastly different answers to identical prompts, leading to confusion and potentially contradictory understanding of the prompted issues. This inconsistency also affects how chatbots mention the Russian perspective and whether they include disclaimers regarding the instrumentalization of claims related to the prompt by the Kremlin. Under these circumstances, substantive variation in the chatbot outputs can undermine trust in chatbots and lead to confusion among users seeking information about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Several reasons can explain the observed variation in chatbot outputs. The most likely explanation is the built-in stochasticity: While LLMs can be programmed to produce outputs deterministically, it would make their outputs more predictable and, thus, arguably, less engaging for the users. Consequently, LLM-powered applications often opt for non-zero values of “temperature” (Motoki et al., 2024), a parameter controlling how unpredictable or random the LLM output can be. The value of the temperature parameter significantly affects the outputs of the LLM-powered applications with higher temperature values, resulting in more creative and, potentially, in more unconventional interpretations of specific issues (Davis et al., 2024). Considering that LLM outputs are, by default, based on probabilities (e.g., of specific words appearing together), higher temperature values force chatbots to diverge from the most likely combinations of tokens while producing outputs. Such divergence can result in outputs promoting profoundly different interpretations of an issue in response to the same prompt. Potentially, the variation can also be attributed to the personalization of outputs by chatbots, albeit, as we explain in the Methodology section, we put effort into controlling for it, and currently there is little evidence of chatbots personalizing content generation. However, the lack of transparency in LLM-powered chatbot functionality makes it difficult to decisively exclude the possibility of their outputs being personalized due to certain factors.

Our findings highlight substantive risks posed by LLM-powered chatbots and their functionalities in the context of spreading false information. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that LLM-powered chatbots can be used not only to create false information (Spitale et al., 2023) but also to detect and counter its spread (Hoes et al., 2023; Kuznetsova et al., 2023). Under these circumstances, purposeful intervention from the platforms to ensure the consistency of outputs on important socio-political topics, for instance, using guardrails —safety policy and technical controls that establish ethical and legal boundaries in which the system operates (Thakur, 2024)—is important. Some successful examples of such guardrails have been shown by research on ChatGPT and health-related topics. Goodman et al. (2023) have demonstrated the consistency in the accuracy of GPT 3.5 and 4 outputs over time. Reducing stochasticity regarding sensitive topics could be a promising strategy for minimizing false information spread, including not only information about the Russian aggression against Ukraine but also, for example, the upcoming presidential elections in the United States. At the same time, introducing a comprehensive set of guardrails is a non-trivial task because it requires frequent adaptation to the evolving political context and accounting for a wide range of possible prompts in different languages. Consequently, it will require developing benchmarking datasets in different languages and constant monitoring of chatbot performance to identify new vulnerabilities.

Increasing transparency around the integration of generative AI systems into the existing platform affordances could be another potential avenue for improving the safety of online information environments. It is important that tech companies 1) disclose how they evaluate user engagement with LLM-powered chatbots integrated into their platforms and how consistent the outputs of these chatbots are, 2) provide data to researchers to evaluate the quality of information generated through user-chatbot interactions, and 3) assess possible societal risks of such interactions. Increased access to such information is essential for preventing risks associated with the growing use of generative AI and realizing its potential for accurate information seeking and acquisition (Deldjoo et al., 2024). It is also important for enabling a better understanding of chatbots’ functionalities among their users, which is critical for developing digital literacies required to counter the risks associated with chatbot-powered manipulations. 

Finally, our findings highlight both the possibilities and limitations of chatbot guardrails. Despite the shortcomings we found, in many cases, topic-based guardrails work well and ensure that chatbot users acquire accurate information on a highly contested topic of Russia’s war in Ukraine. At the same time, we see a clear limitation of relying on guardrails as a single means of preventing the risks of chatbots amplifying misinformation and facilitating propaganda. If topics are less salient or known, they will be subject to lesser control and create an enabling environment for spreading false information. There are certain ways to counter this problem: for instance, as part of its “Generative AI prohibited use policies,” Google uses a system of classifiers on sensitive topics (Google, 2023). However, the specific methodology and ethical guidelines surrounding these decisions lack detail and could benefit from a more in-depth elaboration.

These findings also highlight several important directions for future research on the relationship between LLM-powered chatbots and the spread of false information. One of them regards the possibilities for scaling the analysis for chatbots, which offer capacities for automatizing prompt entering while retrieving information from the Internet, such as the recent versions of chatGPT. Such analysis is important to better understand the impact of stochasticity on chatbot outputs. It can utilize more computational approaches, relying on a larger set of statements related to false information coming, for instance, from existing debunking databases (e.g., Politifact or EU vs. disinfo). Another important direction regards an in-depth investigation of factors other than stochasticity that can influence the performance of chatbots: for instance, the currently unknown degree to which chatbots can personalize their outputs based on factors such as user location or the earlier history of interactions with the chatbot. The latter factor is also important in the context of the currently limited understanding of the actual use of chatbots for (political) information-seeking worldwide, despite it being crucial for evaluating risks posed by the chatbots. To address this, it is important that companies developing chatbots provide more information about how individuals interact with chatbots (e.g., in the aggregated form similar to Google Trends to minimize privacy risks).

Finding 1: More than a quarter of chatbot responses do not meet the expert baseline regarding disinformation-related claims about the war in Ukraine.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of responses to prompts regarding the war in Ukraine aggregated across multiple instances for specific chatbots to compare how they perform on average in terms of accuracy. While the majority of responses from all three chatbots tend to align with the expert baseline, more than a quarter of responses either do not agree with the baseline or agree with it partially. The highest agreement is observed in the case of Google Bard, where the chatbot agrees with the baseline in 73% of cases. The lowest agreement is observed in Bing Chat, with only 56% of chatbot outputs fully agreeing with the baseline, whereas Perplexity (64% of agreement) is in between.

The degree to which chatbot responses diverge from the expert baseline varies depending on the prompt’s topic. For some prompts, chatbots align with the baseline consistently. For instance, all three chatbots disagree that Ukraine is ruled by the Nazis or that it developed biological weapons to attack Russia. Similarly, chatbots consistently argue against the claims that the Bucha massacre was made up by Ukraine and agree that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.

By contrast, in the case of prompts about the number of Russian soldiers killed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion or whether the conflict in eastern Ukraine was a civil war, all chatbots often diverge from the baseline. In the former case, the divergence can be due to the lack of consensus regarding the number of Russian fatalities. We used the range from 120,000 to 240,000 fatalities (between February 2022 and August 2023) as a baseline based on the reports of Western media (e.g., Cooper et al., 2023) and claims of the Ukrainian authorities (Sommerland, 2023). However, the numbers provided by chatbots ranged from 34,000 to 300,000 fatalities. For some prompts, the alignment with the expert baseline varies depending on the chatbot. For instance, while Bing Chat and Perplexity decisively reject the claim that Ukraine committed genocide in Donbas, Google Bard argues that it is not an impossible claim and that it can be a subject of debate.

Under these conditions, the question of sources used by chatbots to generate outputs regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine is particularly important. Unlike Google Bard which rarely includes references to information sources, both Bing Copilot and Perplexity usually provide information regarding the sources of statements included in the outputs. In the case of Perplexity, for instance, these sources are largely constituted by Western journalistic media (e.g., Reuters or The New York Times ) and non-governmental organizations (e.g., Human Rights Watch or Atlantic Council). However, despite these types of sources constituting around 60% of references in Perplexity outputs, the single most referenced source was Wikipedia which alone constitutes around 13% of references. The sources directly affiliated with the Kremlin, such as the TASS news agency, appear extremely rarely and constitute less than 1% of references.

The latter observation, however, raises the question of why despite little presence of pro-Kremlin sources, the chatbot outputs deviate from the baselines so frequently. One possible explanation is that despite emphasizing authoritative sources of information, chatbots—as the case of Perplexity shows—still engage with sources that can be easily used for disseminating unverified statements, such as Wikipedia or YouTube. Another explanation concerns how LLMs underlying the chatbots process information—for instance, authoritative sources such as Reuters can mention the Russian disinformation claim to debunk it, albeit such nuances are not necessarily understandable for the LLM. Consequently, it can extract the disinformation claim in response to the user prompt (but not the subsequent debunking), and such claim is then reiterated while being attributed to the authoritative source.

Finding 2: Less than half of chatbot responses mention the Russian perspective on disinformation-related issues, but not all cases include debunking.

Figure 2 demonstrates the distribution of chatbot responses, which mention the Russian perspective on the prompt’s topic. The exact formats in which the Russian perspective is mentioned vary. Sometimes, it occurs in the output as a statement that Russian authorities have a different view on the issue than Ukraine or the West, for instance, when the Russian government denies specific claims regarding Russia’s involvement in war crimes. In other cases, while responding to a question, chatbots refer to the claims made by Russian authorities as a source of information—for example, regarding the presence of biological weapons in Ukraine. As we suggested earlier, Western authoritative sources (e.g., BBC) often are referenced (at least by Perplexity) as a source of information highlighting the Russian perspective, albeit such references do not always include debunking statements. Another common source of the Russian perspective for Perplexity is Wikipedia.

Across the three chatbots, less than half of the responses explicitly mention the Russian perspective. Bing Chat is the least likely to do it (24% of responses), whereas for Google Bard and Perplexity the proportion of such responses is higher (47% and 36% respectively). The Russian perspective is almost never mentioned in response to prompts dealing with the number of fatalities among the Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians or the origins of the Russian-Ukrainian war. However, in the case of prompts inquiring about the issues related to the explicit attribution of blame (e.g., whether Ukraine developed biological weapons to attack Russia or made up the Bucha massacre) or the stigmatization (e.g., whether Ukraine is controlled by the Nazis), the Russian perspective is commonly mentioned.

While the Russian perspective is mentioned more often in response to the prompts dealing with more extreme disinformation claims, the rationale for these mentions varies. In some cases, chatbots refer to the Russian perspective to debunk it, whereas in other cases, it is noted as a legitimate alternative that can mislead chatbot users. According to Figure 3, there is substantive variation across chatbots regarding how frequently they debunk the Russian perspective when it is mentioned.

Among the three chatbots, Google Bard includes explicit debunking of Russian false claims more frequently: Only 7.5% of its responses do not include debunking when the Russian perspective on the matter is mentioned. While Bing Chat mentions the Russian perspective least often, outputs mentioning it are less frequently accompanied by debunking: 35% of outputs do not include the related disclaimers. Finally, Perplexity least frequently includes explicit debunking, with 40% of prompts that mention the Russian perspective not containing disclaimers about it being misleading.

The chatbots also differ in terms of the sources of debunking. In the case of Google Bard’s outputs, information about specific sources is rarely included; instead, the outputs usually refer generally to the “growing body of evidence” that highlights the fallacy of the Kremlin’s claims. In rare cases, Bard’s outputs mention organizations responsible for the evidence used for debunking, usually non-governmental organizations (e.g., Human Rights Watch). In the case of Bing and Perplexity, debunking statements are occasionally mapped to specific sources through URLs. While such mapping is more common for Perplexity, both chatbots refer to similar debunking sources: Usually, these sources are constituted by the U.S.- and U.K.-based quality media, such as The Guardian , BBC, or NBC News. 

Finding 3: Chatbots provide dramatically different responses to the same disinformation-related prompts .

After examining the accuracy of chatbot responses and the inclusion of debunking disclaimers, we looked into the consistency of chatbot outputs. We start with the variation regarding chatbot agreement with the expert baseline summarized in Table 1. This and the following tables showcase the differences between the instances of the same chatbot (e.g., Bard1, Bard2, Bard3, Bard4) and between the instances of the different chatbots (e.g., Bard1 and Bing1).

Figure 4 indicates several important points. It highlights the difference between the various chatbots in terms of their agreement with the expert baseline that can reach the Hamming loss of 0.60 (e.g., between instance 2 of Bing and instance 3 of Perplexity). Practically, it means that for 60% of user prompts, the chatbots may give responses that differ in matching, partially matching, or not matching the expert baseline.

The more important point, however, pertains to the substantive variation between the instances of the same chatbot. In this case, the smallest Hamming loss scores are 0.03 and 0.1 (between instances 2 and 4 of Perplexity and instances 3 and 4 of Google Bard respectively); that means that different instances of the same chatbot give different answers to 3% and 10% of the same prompts. In other cases, however, the variation affects up to 53% of outputs (e.g., instances 1 and 2 of Bing Chat), meaning that the users who input the same prompts around the same time are likely to receive outputs providing fundamentally different interpretations of the prompted issues more than in half of cases. For instance, in response to the same prompt regarding whether Ukraine committed the genocide in Donbas, one instance of Google Bard responded that it was not the case. In contrast, another argued that it could be a realistic possibility.

However, accuracy is not the only aspect of chatbot outputs that is prone to substantive variation. Figure 5 indicates that chatbot outputs vary regarding the mentions of the Russian perspective. Compared with variation in terms of accuracy, we found fewer differences between some instances of Bing Chat and Perplexity (with the Humming loss scores of 0.14 and 0.11 for instances 3 and 4 of Bing and instances 2 and 4 of Perplexity). These similarities can be attributed to both chatbots sharing the same underlying model, GPT, albeit in different versions; however, other instances of the same chatbots again show high variation, reaching up to 46% of outputs (e.g., instance 2 of Bing Chat and instance 1 of Perplexity).

Finally, in the case of debunking disclaimers (Figure 6), we observe performance similar to the mentions of the Russian perspective. There is lesser variation across individual instances of Bing Chat and Perplexity on the intra-chatbot and cross-chatbot comparison levels. However, the Humming scores still vary substantially: from 0.39 to 0.04. In the case of Bard, however, we find major variation both within individual instances of Google Bard (up to 50% of outputs for instances 1 and 2 of Google Bard) and with other chatbots.

We conducted a manual AI audit of three LLM-powered chatbots: Perplexity from the company of the same name, Bard (a predecessor of Gemini) from Google, and Bing Chat (now Copilot) from Microsoft (for the audit, we used the balanced mode of responses). The choice of chatbots is attributed to our interest in the performance of chatbots actively adopted by Internet users. Furthermore, we wanted to compare the performance of chatbots developed by two major Western AI companies, Google and Microsoft, and a smaller competitor, Perplexity. Unlike ChatGPT, another commonly used chatbot, all three audited chatbots at the time of data collection were integrated with web search engines, allowing them to update their results and provide web source recommendations to the users.

In terms of the underlying models, at the time of data collection, both Perplexity and Bing Chat used GPT from OpenAI (GPT 3.5 for the free version of Perplexity used in this study and GPT 4.0 for Bing Chat), whereas Google Bard relied on PaLM. Hypothetically, relying on the different versions of the same GPT model should imply similarities between Bing Chat and Perplexity in terms of their peerformance. However, the earlier studies comparing ChatGPT and Bing Chat (e.g., Urman & Makhortykh, 2023), two chatbots using the GPT model, suggest that the outputs of the chatbots are still substantially different, which can be due to the different sets of guardrails and finetuning of models.

To conduct the audit, we developed a set of 28 prompts dealing with the common Kremlin disinformation narratives in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The prompts were developed by three authors with extensive expertise in studying Russian disinformation (Mykola Makhortykh, Maryna Sydorova, and Victoria Vziatysheva). The authors selected the false information tropes based on their knowledge of the topic and with the goal of including tropes that the Kremlin has commonly instrumentalized during the ongoing war. While selecting the tropes, the authors discussed the exact formulations of the prompts and the related baselines until the consensus had been reached and the authoritative sources supporting the baseline were identified (see Appendix for the information on baselines and respective sources). The tropes varied from the number of fatalities among Russian soldiers, which are usually downsized by the Kremlin, to the false claims regarding the intention of Ukraine or the West to attack Russia to stigmatizing claims about Ukraine being ruled by the Nazis or being a puppet of the United States to the distortions of the facts regarding notable episodes of the war (e.g., the downing of MH17 or the mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Olenivka).

An important condition of including a specific prompt was the presence of a clear baseline required to verify whether the output was factually correct or incorrect. Each prompt was formulated as a question in English. Most questions were phrased as polar (i.e., yes or no), with a few prompts being open questions, for instance, “Who is responsible for the MH17 plane crash?” and “Is Ukraine being controlled by the United States?” (see the complete list of the prompts in the Appendix).

The audit was conducted in October 2023. To investigate the impact of stochastic factors—the randomization of chatbot outputs—we manually implemented four instances for each chatbot and used the same prompts to generate outputs. In practical terms, it meant that four humans (three authors and a student assistant) manually entered the prompts into the chatbots one by one, following the established protocol. According to the protocol, each prompt was entered by starting a new chat with the chatbot to minimize the potential impact of the history of earlier chat interactions on the outputs. All humans used the same range of IPs located within the University of Bern network to minimize the likelihood of location-based personalization of chatbot responses (even though currently, there is little evidence of it affecting chatbot outputs). Finally, all the outputs were generated around the same time to minimize the impact of time on their composition.

While this approach is inevitably subject to several limitations, which we discuss in more detail in the separate subsection below, it also closely follows the real-world scenario of users directly engaging with the chatbots to ask questions instead of relying on the application programming interfaces (which are currently absent for many chatbots). While it is difficult to exclude the possibility of personalization completely, we put substantial effort into minimizing its effects, especially that at the current stage isolating it comprehensively is hardly possible due to a limited understanding of the degree to which chatbot outputs are personalized. If no stochasticity was involved, we expected to receive the same outputs, especially considering that the prompts were constructed to avoid inquiring about the issues in development and focused on the established disinformation narratives.

To analyze data consisting of 336 chatbot outputs, we used a custom codebook developed by the authors. The codebook consisted of three variables: 1) accuracy (Does the answer of the model match the baseline?), 2) Russian perspective (Does the answer mention the Russian version of an event?), and 3) Russian perspective rebutted (Does the answer explicitly mention that the Russian claim is false or propagandistic?). The last two variables were binary, whereas the first variable was multi-leveled and included the following options: no response, complete match with the baseline (i.e., true), partial match with the baseline (i.e., partially true), and no match with the baseline (i.e., false).

The coding was done by two coders. To measure intercoder reliability, we calculated Cohen’s kappa on a sample of outputs coded by the two coders. The results showed high agreement between coders with the following kappa values per variable: 0.78 (accuracy), 1 (Russian perspective), 0.96 (Russian perspective rebutted). Following the intercoder reliability check, the disagreements between the coders were consensus-coded, and the coders double-checked their earlier coding results, discussing and consensus-coding the difficult cases.

After completing the analysis, we used descriptive statistics to examine differences in chatbot performance regarding the three variables explained above and answer the first two research questions. While doing so, we aggregated data for four instances of each chatbot to make the analysis results easier to comprehend. Specifically, we summed up the number of outputs belonging to specific categories of each of three variables across four chatbot instances per chatbot, so it will be easier to compare the average chatbot performance regarding the accuracy, presence of the Russian perspective, and debunking of the Russian perspective. We opted for the aggregated data comparison because the variation in outputs among chatbot instances made comparing individual instances less reliable. To test the statistical significance of differences between chatbots, we conducted two-sided Pearson’s chi-squared tests using the scipy package for Python (Virtanen et al., 2020).

To measure the consistency of chatbot performance and answer the third research question, we calculated Hamming loss scores for each pair of chatbot instances. Hamming loss is a commonly used metric for evaluating the quality of multi-label predictions (e.g., Destercke, 2014). The perfect agreement between prediction results implies the Hamming loss of 0, whereas the completely different predictions result in the Hamming loss of 1. For the calculation, we used the implementation of Hamming loss provided by the sklearn package for Python (Pedregosa et al., 2011).

Limitations

It is important to mention several limitations of the analysis that highlight directions for future research besides the ones outlined in the Implications section. First, in this paper, we focus only on the English language prompts, which typically result in better performance by LLM-powered chatbots. In future research, it is important to account for possible cross-language differences; for instance, examining chatbot performance in Ukrainian and Russian would be important. Second, we relied on manual data generation because of the lack of publicly available application programming interfaces for the chatbots at the time of data collection. Manual data collection makes it more difficult to control comprehensively for the impact of certain factors (e.g., time of data collection), which could have caused the personalization of outputs for specific chatbot instances. Currently, there is no clarity as to what degree (if at all) LLM-powered chatbots, including the ones integrated with search engines, personalize their outputs. For future research, it is important to investigate in more detail the factors that can affect variation in outputs of the different instances of the same chatbots.

Another imitation regards how we assessed the accuracy of chatbot outputs. Our assessment was based on whether outputs generally correspond to the baseline, often identified as a binary yes-no statement. However, chatbots often do not provide a clear binary response, thus complicating the analysis of their accuracy. Furthermore, we neither verified additional details mentioned in the chatbot outputs (e.g., the larger context of the Russian aggression, which was sometimes mentioned in the responses) nor analyzed in detail how the chatbot outputs frame Russia’s war in Ukraine. Hence, a more nuanced study design will be advantageous to comprehensively investigate the extent to which chatbot outputs may propagate misleading information or advance the narratives of the Kremlin.

• Artificial Intelligence
• / Disinformation
• / Information Bias

Cite this Essay

Makhortykh, M., Sydorova, M., Baghumyan, A., Vziatysheva, V., & Kuznetsova, E. (2024). Stochastic lies: How LLM-powered chatbots deal with Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review . https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-154

• / Appendix B

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This work has been financially supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII131 – “Weizenbaum-Institut”).

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Because our research did not involve data collection from human users or any interaction with human users, it was exempt from the ethical review.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are properly credited.

Data Availability

All materials needed to replicate this study are available via the Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZEDNXH

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review for the excellent feedback, which helped us to improve the manuscript substantially. We also would like to thank Dr. Tobias Rohrbach for his valuable methodological feedback.