Harvard

Citation Style

Smarthinking Handbook
The Manual briefly specifies an
author-date citation style.

NOTE: Other universities might approach

author-date citation style differently, so
always ask the student to check with
his/her instructor or his/her school’s
website for availability of any school-
specific style guides.
In-text Citations
General Guidelines:
 Separate the author’s name from the publication year
with a single space.

 Place a comma between the year and any locator

information.

 Include a comma between each additional locator

information.

(Smith 2016, vol. 2, p. 45)

General Guidelines:
 When quoting a paginated source, cite the author’s
last name, the publication year, and a page number.

 Locator information is not required in paraphrasing a

source, but can be included if necessary.

From 2 separate locations

(Smith 2016, p. 23, 26) within a source

(Smith 2016, pp. 23-26) From consecutive pages

Other locator information aside from page number:
para. or paras - paragraph
app. - appendix
ch. - chapter
col. or cols - column
l. or ll. - line(s)
pl. - plate
vol. or vols - volume(s)
sec. or secs - section (s)
trans. - translator

Note the format here: Locator abbreviations ending with s (that indicate plurality) should
not end with a period while all other locator abbreviations should end with a period.
Formatting in-text citations

1
If the author’s name is part of the signal phrase,
place the citation (indicating the publication
year and, possibly, locator information)
immediately after the author’s name.

Smith (2016, p. 16) found that most of the geese

have disappeared from the county area.
Formatting in-text citations

2
If the author’s name is located in the citation,
place the citation at the end of the sentence,
before the period.

One study found that most of the geese have

disappeared from the county area (Smith 2016).
Formatting in-text citations

3
If a citation refers to one segment of the
sentence, it can fall at the end of the relevant
clause or phrase.

Although one source found that most of the

geese have disappeared from the county area
(Smith 2016), county officials have disputed its
findings.
Specific Guidelines
Formatting Quotations
 Use single quotation marks when directly quoting
material and include terminal punctuation after the
quotation mark.

Lowe (2016, p. 9) aims to answer whether the

victim’s ‘worst choices outweigh his best ones’.
Formatting Quotations
EXEMPTION
 If the quoted material is a full sentence and stands
completely alone, such as in an interview transcript, the
terminating punctuation should fall within the quotation
mark.

Patient: ‘I was diagnosed with diabetes only late

in my life, after I had turned 80.’

Nurse: ‘And what medications did you receive at

the time?’
Formatting Quotations
Changing Material Within Quotations

 Square brackets [ ] can be used for several

purposes within a quotation:

1. to clarify the meaning of a word or an idea

2. to add further information, or
3. to identify errors.
Formatting Quotations
Formatting Long Quotations from Prose

Quotations more than thirty words long should be

set off as block quotations.

Block quotations should be:

1. indented from the margin
2. put in smaller type than the surrounding text
3. positioned without quotation marks
Formatting Quotations
Formatting Quotations from a Secondhand Source
To quote a secondhand source, also called a
secondary source, use quotation marks as
normal.
 A distinction between the secondary source and
the original source should be clear within the
citation.
One study found that ‘over 20% of the geese have disappeared
from the county area’ (Smith, cited in Jones 2015, p. 23).

Smith (cited in Jones 2015, p. 23) found that ‘over 20% of the
geese have disappeared from the county area’.
Specific Guidelines
Formatting Source
Use of quotation marks and Italics
Titles

 Quotation marks should be used when referring

to the titles of unpublished documents and
shorter works such as chapters in published works,
articles in periodicals, essays, lectures, short
poems and songs, and similar types of short
sources.

 The manual recommends the use of single

quotation marks.
Formatting Source Titles
Use of quotation marks and Italics

 Italics should be used when referring to

the titles of longer works such as books,
periodicals, newspapers, magazines, plays,
and long poems
Specific Guidelines
Capitalization

Maximal capitalization applies only to titles of

periodicals (magazines, journals, newspapers,
etc.) and titles of legislation.

 Capitalize the first letter of every word in the

title except articles, prepositions, and
conjunctions.
Capitalization

 Minimal capitalization applies to almost all types

of sources except the 2 previously mentioned.

 The first letter of the first word of the title should

be uppercase, as should the first letter of any
proper noun or name. Acronyms should follow
their usual case, whether uppercase (CDC) or
lowercase (scuba).

 All other words should be lowercase, including

the first letter of the first word of any subtitle.
Specific Guidelines
Author
Multiple authors
 If the source has two or three authors, all authors
should be identified in the signal phrase or in the
parenthetical citation.

 An ampersand is used in a parenthetical citation,

but the conjunction and is used in a signal phrase.

(Smith, Jones & Weston 2013)

Smith, Jones and Weston (2013) found that . . .

Author
Multiple authors

 If citing more than one source by the same

author, indicate the author’s name and the dates
of the sources in chronological order.

(Smith 2015, 2016)

Author
Multiple authors

 If citing two different authors with the same last

name, include their initial or initials in text to
differentiate them.

(Smith, J 2015)
Author
Corporate Author

If a corporate author such as a government

department or a university has a long name,
using its acronym in text is acceptable. However,
the corresponding entry in the reference list
should include a cross-reference that identifies
the acronym.
Author
Editors and Others as Authors

Occasionally, an editor, translator, compiler, or

reviser might take the place of the author in a
citation if this person’s role is particularly
prominent.

 Such contributors’ roles are abbreviated as ed.,

trans., comp., and rev., and they fall before the
name of the person when cited in text.

(ed. Clarke 2013, p. 45)

Author
No Author

If a source has no identifiable author, cite the

complete title of the source in text.

(All about bats 2001)

Author
No Author

 An in-text citation for a newspaper article

without an author should provide the name of
the newspaper, the date of its publication, and a
page reference.

(Financial Times 20 December 2016, p. 13)

NOTE: Since the citation has provided the

relevant information for locating the article, no
reference entry is needed for such a source.
Author
One Citation, Multiple Sources
 If you find a particular fact in two or more
separate sources, or if you mention ideas from
multiple sources in a single sentence, cite all of
those sources in one citation.
Organize those sources alphabetically by
author’s last name, rather than chronologically
by date.
Separate them with a semicolon.

(Barks 2015; Smith 2000; Torres 2016)

Specific Guidelines
No Date

 If the source has no known date, cite n.d. for no

date.
(Smith n.d.)

If the source’s date can roughly be established,

use c. for circa.
(Jones c. 1995)
No Date
 If the source’s date is unclear, place a question mark
after the estimated date.
(Barnes 2000?)

 If the work has been accepted by a publisher but is

not yet published, indicate this with forthcoming.
(Sparks forthcoming)

 If the work has been accepted and is in the process

of being published, indicate this with in press.
(Jones in press)
Specific Guidelines
Poetry and Plays
 Rather than a page number, a citation for a play
should indicate the number of the act, scene,
and lines.
(Shakespeare 1960, ac. 2, sn. 3, ll. 45-56)

A citation for poetry should indicate the line

number(s).
(Frost 1965, ll. 3-4)
Specific Guidelines
Audiovisual Materials

 When referring to a film, video, television

program, or radio broadcast, cite the title of the
work and the year in text rather than the name of
a creator or contributor.

(Interstellar 2015)
References
General Guidelines

1
The items in a given reference are separated by
commas, not periods.

EXEMPTION: Space alone separates the author

from the publication year.

Author publication year, ‘Title,’ Publisher, Location.

General Guidelines

2
References follow the same rules in
capitalization and formatting titles that
the in-text citations follow.
General Guidelines

3
The reference list should be organized in
alphabetical order by author’s last name.

EXEMPTION: If you’re drafting a longer work such

as a chapter or a dissertation, reference-list
entries can be grouped according to themes,
subject, or source type.
General Guidelines

4
References don’t require hanging
indentations or double spacing, but this
should be clarified from the professor.
Specific Guidelines
Author

 The reference entry should present the

author’s last name followed by the
author’s first initial or initials without periods
or spaces.

Smith, JB 2000
Author

 References for sources with multiple

authors should always list all authors. An
ampersand, not the conjunction and,
should link the final author and shouldn’t
be preceded by a comma.

Smith, J, Jones, F & Markham, B 2015,

Author

 If a source has no identifiable author,

place the source’s title in the author
position in the reference entry.

 Alphabetize the entry based on the title’s

first word, disregarding any article (a, an,
the).
Specific Guidelines
Descriptor
 When useful, place a descriptor like
press release or DVD in lowercase after
the source’s title. Such descriptors can
clarify the nature of an unusual source.

Pearson Education 2016, Early childhood educators to

gather in Atlanta to explore new horizons in setting
youngest learners on the path to success, press release
Specific Guidelines
Title
 In the rare instance that a source has
no title, place a lowercase source
descriptor, without quotation marks or
italics, in the title spot in the reference
entry.

Barris, C 1998, email, 5 February, <cbarris@email.com>.

Specific Guidelines
Location

 If the name of the publisher already

indicates the city of publication (e.g.,
University of Toronto Press), the reference
entry does not need to indicate publisher
location.
Specific Guidelines
Page Numbers

 The Manual doesn’t require page numbers in

a reference entry for a book.

 However, reference entries for periodicals

should include page numbers or a page
range, preceded by the abbreviation p. or
pp., respectively.
Watterson, B 1994, ‘Calvin and Hobbes’, The Seattle
Times, 14 August, p. c2.
Specific Guidelines
Page Numbers

 If you indicate a page range in your

references entry, you can eliminate any
repeated numbers, like this:

pp. 190-8 instead of pp. 190-198

Specific Guidelines
Other details

 In general, other relevant information,

such as edition number, volume number,
and issue number, should be included in
a reference.
Specific Guidelines
Access Date
 When referencing an electronic source, always
include the access date, placing it before the
URL. The access date should be preceded by
the word viewed.

 Baldwin, J 1984, ‘The art of fiction no. 78’, The Paris Review, no.
91, viewed 21 August 2016,
<http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2994/james-
baldwin-the-art-of-fiction-no-78-jamesbaldwin>. Interview by
Jordan Elgrably.
Specific Guidelines
URL
When referencing an electronic source,
include a stable URL whenever possible
and place it in angled brackets (<>).

 If a source doesn’t have a stable URL, its

reference entry should indicate the main
URL of the website or source.
Specific Guidelines
Contributor
Additional material, such as information about
contributors or other relevant details, can be
included after the closing period of the
reference entry. In all cases, end this additional
information with a period.
Baldwin, J 1984, ‘The art of fiction no. 78’, The Paris Review,
no. 91, viewed 21 August 2016,
<http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2994/james-
baldwin-the-art-of-fiction-no-78-jamesbaldwin>. Interview
by Jordan Elgrably.
Optional:
 Including locator information when paraphrasing
a source

 Using the abbreviations l. or ll (line/s) when

repeatedly citing lines from the same source

 Citing audio-visual locator information such as

timestamps

 Breaking the URL at the end of a line

Thank you!