Harvard Referencing Generator

How Harvard referencing works

Harvard is an author-date style. Wherever you use a source, you give the author's surname and the year, for example (Jackson, 2019). At the end, every source appears in one alphabetical reference list. No single body owns Harvard, which is why each university can publish a slightly different version.

This tool uses Cite Them Right, the Harvard guide adopted by a large number of UK universities. If your university has its own Harvard guide, compare two or three entries with it. Any differences tend to be minor, like punctuation or where the edition number sits.

Citing in the text

Place the author and year in brackets after the point you're making, or name the author in the sentence and put only the year in brackets. Add the page number when you quote, or when you refer to one particular passage.

• One author: (Jackson, 2019) or Jackson (2019) shows that…
• Two or three authors: (Smith and Patel, 2021)
• Four or more authors: (Grady et al., 2019)
• With a quotation: (Jackson, 2019, p. 45)
• Undated source: (World Health Organization, no date)

Where students lose marks

Markers rarely penalise an unusual source type. They penalise inconsistency. Format every entry the same way, spell the author's name identically in the text and the list, and give a DOI or URL for anything you found online.

Only cite what you've actually read. If a textbook told you about a study, cite the textbook. Our guide to avoiding plagiarism explains secondary referencing and paraphrasing.

Harvard examples

Each example below was made with this generator, so it's exactly what you'll get.