Formatting Harvard In-text Citations Accurately
Formatting Harvard In-text Citations Accurately
Each source must be cited within text properly. Whether you’re using excerpts, paraphrases, or direct quotes, they all must be cited. Harvard reference generator can be of great help here, but as we said, knowing the basics by heart is also important.
One Author and Pages
Citations can be direct and indirect. Direct citations entail mentioning the author right in text itself. Indirect ones mean that you provide information from source and put the author’s name into parenthesis.
If you’re referring to text in general, all you need is author and date. In case of direct citation, format your reference like this.
When using indirect citations, follow this example.
When you’re referring to specific moments from a source or use direct quotes, you’re going to need page numbers. This is how they should be formatted.
if you’re mentioning/quoting moments from several pages, use ‘pp.’ instead of ‘p.’ and list them through the hyphen.
No Date
As it was already stated, dates are crucial. Still, you might find a source where no date is present. You can’t rely on the Harvard referencing tools in such cases because it is very strict about using dates no matter what.
Check the content and its medium to find an approximate date. For example, there is no date visible in your article, but there is a year mentioned for those pieces published right before and after it. Logically, yours was created in the same year. If you’re not certain, mention it like this:
If things are trickier than that, try to establish a decade of publication. For example, use (199-) if you’re sure about your found date or put (199?) if you’re not entirely confident. However, if the date cannot be identified, you can also use n.d. for “not dated”.
Two-Three Authors
When source has several authors, use Harvard citation generator tool or remember these rules. Mention them with the help of ‘and’ both in text and in parenthesis. Everything else remains the same as in instance with one author.
Do the same for three authors:
More Than Three Authors
For four or more authors in Harvard citations, you’ll have to use ‘et al.’ Pay attention to punctuation.
No Known Author
Unlike in other styles, Harvard referencing generator requires the usage of source’s creator. If you can’t find him/her, mention them as ‘Anonymous’ or ‘Anon.’ in short. Other rules remain the same.
Multiple Sources in One Citation
Combining several sources in one citation is a task you have to do manually as the Harvard reference generator can’t know what authors combinations you’re using. It’s quite easy, just follow this example.
In parenthesis, separate chosen writing professionals with a semicolon:
Authors with the Same Last Name
Harvard citation generator also won’t assist you in the instance if there are authors who share one last name in your work. To avoid confusion, give their first names’ initials and use dates of works to distinguish them.
It’ll look like this:
Several Works by One Author
Often, you have to use several sources authored by one person. If they were created in different years, this will be the point of distinction: just don’t forget to keep mentioning the year every time after the author’s name.
When author published several works in one year, differentiate them through lowercase letters alphabetically. For example:
Organizations
Treat organizations like you would authors, just use their names instead of actual people’s last names.
For instance:
Electronic Sources
These sources don’t differ from physically published ones much, they simply lack pages. So, you’ll just need authors’ last names and date.
