Wikipedia:Harvard referencing

Parenthetical referencing is a citation system in which in-text citations are made using parentheses, as opposed to footnotes. Full citations collected in alphabetical order by author's last name under a "references," "bibliography," or "works cited" heading at the end. It is one of three citation styles recommended for Wikipedia, although it is less common than footnotes. The other two are embedded links and footnotes. See Wikipedia:Citing sources for more details.

There are two broad styles for this: author-date or Harvard referencing, which is primarily used in the social sciences and regulated by groups such as the American Psychological Association (APA), and author-title referencing, which is primarily used in the humanities and regulated by the Modern Language Association (MLA).

This article focuses on the author-date style of parenthetical referencing developed by Harvard University,^[1] which is used by many publishers internationally.^[2][3] Author-date referencing is more common on Wikipedia than author-title referencing.

Origins

See Parenthetical referencing#Origins.

Inline citation in the body of the article

Under the author-date 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".

• The parentheses close before the period marking the end of the sentence, as in the fake example at the end of this sentence (Jones 2005).
• You may name the author within the article itself, in which case only put the year in parentheses; for example "Smith (2005) says..."
• For two authors, use (Smith & Jones 2005)
• For three or more authors, use (Smith et al. 2005).^[4]
• If the same author has published two books or articles 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, p.28) or (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).
• 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).
• When the author of the reference is named as part of the text itself, put the year in parentheses; for example "Smith (2005) says..."
• For a quotation that is indented, the citation is placed after the period, like the following. (Smith 2005)
• In cases where the author is unknown:^[3]

If the article is written for an organization or periodical then use its name, as in (Department of Transport 2001) or (National Geographic 2005),

otherwise, use the article title, italicized, as in (Advertising in the Western Cape 1990, p. 14).

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).

Full citation in the reference section of the article

Information on creating a full citation is available in Wikipedia:Citing sources.

Full 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:

• Author, A. (2005a). Harvard Referencing, New York: Random House. ISBN 1-899235-74-4
• Author, A. (2005b). More Harvard Referencing, New York: Random House. ISBN 1-899235-74-4

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

• Traynor, I. "Judge tells Ankara to decide on fate of leading author", The Guardian, December 17, 2005.

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.

Linking inline and full citations

Further information: Wikilinks to full references and Example edits for different methods

Creating a clickable link within the inline citation which links to the full reference is recommended. There several ways to do this and no method is preferred. This section describes the two most common methods.

(Be advised that Wikipedia:Citing sources requires that all articles use a consistent citation style throughout and that editors should not change the citation style of an article without achieving consensus to do so on the article's talk page.)

Using templates

This can be accomplished using {{Harv}} and {{Citation}} templates. {{Harv}} is used for the inline citation in the body of the article, for example {{Harv|Ritter|2002}} renders as (Ritter 2002).

{{Citation}} is used in references section at the bottom of the article to format the full citation.

* {{Citation| last=Ritter | first=R. | year=2002 | title=The Oxford Style Manual | publisher=Oxford University Press | isbn=0-19-860564-1 }}

This renders as:

• Ritter, R. (2002), The Oxford Style Manual, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-860564-1 

Notice that clicking on the inline citation highlights the full citation.

In articles with mixed citation styles and predominantly using the {{Cite xxx}} family of templates, one can create a {{harv}}-compatible citation using the "ref" parameter which is supported by some of the {{Cite xxx}} family templates, as demonstrated:

* {{cite book| last=Ritter | first=R. | year=2002 | title=The Oxford Style Manual | publisher=Oxford University Press | isbn=0-19-860564-1 | ref=CITEREFRitter2002}}

In general, the rule is simply to concatenate the string "CITEREF", the last name, and the year.

By hand

Alternatively, one can format the HTML link by hand. For example ([[#Ritter2002|Ritter 2002]]) renders as (Ritter 2002).

You can create an anchor to Ritter's work in the References section like this:

* <cite id=Ritter2002>Ritter, R. (2002). ''The Oxford Style Manual''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860564-1</cite>

Which would render as:

• Ritter, R. (2002). The Oxford Style Manual. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860564-1

Again, notice that clicking on the inline citation highlights the full citation.

Pros and cons versus other referencing systems

See Author-date referencing#Pros & cons.

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 and Wikipedia:Citation_templates#Harvard citation 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.

See also

• Parenthetical referencing
• Wikipedia:No original research
• Wikipedia:Verifiability
• Wikipedia:Cite sources
• Wikipedia:Reliable sources
• Wikipedia:Footnotes
• Wikipedia talk:Footnotes/Mixed citations and footnotes
• Wikipedia:Footnote3
• Template:Rp - adds ability to handle Harvard-style page number citations to Cite.php inline references (intended for use when one source is cited a large number of times, and would produce either too many individual entries under <references /> for the same source, or one exceedingly long entry that cited too many pages to possibly be useful to readers).

Notes