Wikipedia:Harvard referencing

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Harvard referencing, also known as the author-date system, or parenthetical system, is a citation system developed by Harvard University and used by many publishers internationally.[1] It is one of three citation styles recommended for Wikipedia. The other two are embedded links and footnotes. See Wikipedia:Citing sources for more details.

Contents

[edit] Citation format

Under the Harvard referencing system, a book is cited in the text in parentheses, after the section, sentence, or paragraph for which the book was used as a source, using the surname of the author and the year of publication only, with the parentheses closing before the period, as in (Author 2005). A complete citation is then placed at the end of the text in an alphabetized list of "References".

  • For two authors, use (Smith & Jones 2005).
  • For more authors, use (Smith et al. 2005).
  • If the same author has published two books in 2005, and both are being referenced in the text, this is written as (Author 2005a) and (Author 2005b).
  • The specific page, section, or division of the cited work can follow the date in this way: (Author 2006:28).
  • If the date of publication is unavailable, use "n.d." (meaning, no date)
  • Newspaper articles may be cited by the byline, as in (Traynor 2005), though this is less common.
  • Newspaper articles may alternatively use the name of the newspaper and the date of publication after the sentence (The Guardian, December 17, 2005).
  • Linking to the article using an embedded link, like this. [1] Embedded links, like footnotes, are placed after punctuation.
  • A book published long after the original publication may be cited (Marx [1867] 1967).
  • For a quotation that is within the text and marked by quotation marks, the citation follows the end-quotation mark ("), and is placed before the period (.), "like this" (Smith 2005).
  • For a quotation that is indented, the citation is placed after the period, like the following. (Smith 2005)
  • When the author of the reference is named as part of the text itself, put the year in parentheses; for example "Smith (2005) says..."

[edit] Page numbers

When citing books and articles, provide page numbers where appropriate. Page numbers must be included in a citation that accompanies a specific quotation from or a paraphrase or reference to a specific passage of a book or article.

  • According to Jessica Benjamin, one weakness of radical politics has been "to idealize the oppressed" (Benjamin 1988:9).
  • Jessica Benjamin has argued that radical politics has been weakened. (Benjamin 1988:9).

Page numbers are especially important in case of lengthy unindexed books. As different editions of a book may be paginated in different ways, it is useful to include, either with the citation, or in the reference section, the edition of the book which is being cited. In books, articles, and web pages, if there are chapters or section headings, these may be included in the citation, if it makes it easier for readers to find the cited information.

Page numbers are not required when a citation accompanies a general description of a book or article, or when a book or article, as a whole, is being used to exemplify a particular point of view.

  • In the 1980s several feminists explored feminist readings of psychoanalytical thought (e.g. Gallop 1985, Hamilton 1982, Rose 1986, Benjamin 1988).
  • Jessica Benjamin argues that the relationship between males and females is paradigmatic of domination and submission (Benjamin 1988).

[edit] References section

Complete citations must be provided, in alphabetical order, in a References section following the text.

For a book: in the case of (Author 2005a) and (Author 2005b), this might be:

For an article: in the case of (Traynor 2005) or (The Guardian, December 17, 2005), this might be:

Whether or not to use only the initial, as in Traynor, I. or the full name., as in Traynor, Ian, is a matter of personal preference.

A book published long after the original publication:

  • Marx, Karl. [1867] (1967). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. I. Edited by Frederick Engels. New York: International Publishers. ISBN 1-899235-74-4

As with all citation advice in Wikipedia, the most important thing is to provide some information about where you found your material, even if you don't know how to format the citation.

[edit] Pros & cons

The advantage of Harvard referencing is that a reader familiar with a field is likely to recognize a citation without having to check in the references section. If the same reference is cited more than once, even the casual reader not familiar with the author may remember the name. The disadvantages of the system are that it requires more space (which is why the journal Nature for example doesn't use it) and that the rules can be complicated or unclear for non-academic references, particularly those where the personal author is unknown, such as government-issued documents and standards. The system may also be unfamiliar and distracting to a general readership, who are unfamiliar with journal articles.

[edit] Templates

Several templates have been developed for Harvard referencing. A summary of the syntax of all Harvard citation templates is included in Wikipedia:Citation templates, and examples of use are at Wikipedia:Harvard citation template examples. Alternatively, the Footnote3 family of templates includes templates designed for Harvard referencing: {{ref harv}}, {{note label}} and {{ref harvard}}.

There is no requirement or recommendation to use citation or footnote templates in Wikipedia, and many editors find them unhelpful and distracting.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "Bibliographic Format for References" University of Georgia; advice is based on the Chicago Manual of Style.


[edit] Further reading

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