Harvard Style Citing &
Referencing

Student Guide
Heriot-Watt University
Information Services

Heriot-Watt University Information Services: Harvard Citing and Referencing Guide

1

ABOUT HARVARD CITING AND REFERENCING

4

1.1

Why provide citations and references?

5

1.2

When must I provide a citation?

5

1.3

When do I not need to provide a citation?

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1.4

Plagiarism

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2

HOW TO CITE AND REFERENCE USING THE HARVARD STYLE

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2.1

In-text citations

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2.2

Reference Lists

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2.3

Reference List or Bibliography?

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BOOKS

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11

3.1

Books with 1 author

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3.2

Books with 2 or 3 authors

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3.3

Books with 4 authors

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3.4

Chapters in an edited book

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3.5

Books with an editor

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3.6

Books with no author

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3.7

E-books

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3.8

Books in translation

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JOURNAL ARTICLES

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Online Journal Articles

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4.1
5

CITING & REFERENCING NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

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5.1

Online newspapers

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5.2

Print newspapers

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CITING & REFERENCING THESES & DISSERTATIONS

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Version 1.1 last updated 03 October 2012

Heriot-Watt University Information Services: Harvard Citing and Referencing Guide
6.1
7

Theses
CITING & REFERENCING THE WEB

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7.1

Web document with an author

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7.2

Web document with no author

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7.3

Web document with a corporate author

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7.4

PDF document

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7.5

Blog

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SECONDARY REFERENCING & QUOTING DIRECTLY

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8.1

Secondary referencing

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8.2

Short quotes

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8.3

Long quotes

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FURTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION

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Version 1.1 last updated 03 October 2012

Heriot-Watt University Information Services: Harvard Citing and Referencing Guide

1

About Harvard Citing and Referencing

Citing and referencing is an important part of the writing process. When writing an assignment, eg a paper, essay, project report, dissertation or thesis, whenever you use ideas, quotes or any other material from an external source (eg a book, journal, conference paper, newspaper, website etc.), you must show the source of that information in both the body of your text (an in-text citation) and at the end of your work (a reference list).
The Harvard System is one of the most commonly used referencing systems. It is one type of “author, date” referencing systems (as opposed to a “numeric system”, which uses numbers for in-text citations).
There are different versions of the Harvard system, each with slightly different formatting. Your supervisor will specify a referencing style for you to follow, but will not normally say which version of
Harvard you should choose. No version is “better” than another – you should follow one style throughout your work.

Heriot-Watt University Information Services has chosen one version of Harvard for this guide. This style has also been loaded into EndNoteWeb and EndNote Desktop Reference Management Software. If you are using this software to store and format your references, then you should choose “Harvard
HWU” to be consistent with this guide. However, you should note that when using reference management software to format your references, you should always check your references for consistency before submitting the work.

For more information and workshops on Harvard Citing and Referencing, and also on using EndNoteWeb and EndNote Desktop, see the Further Information section in this guide.

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Version 1.1 last updated 03 October 2012

Heriot-Watt University Information Services: Harvard Citing and Referencing Guide

1.1

Why provide citations and references?

Citing and referencing allows you to acknowledge the work of others and to demonstrate that: you have gathered evidence to support your ideas and arguments you have used credible, good quality sources have read widely and at an