Harvard Citation Guide: Cite Them Right 12th Edition (Author-Date)

By MLA Generator Editorial Team · Updated May 27, 2026

Harvard is the author–date style most UK universities, business schools, and social-science departments expect. Unlike APA or MLA, “Harvard” is a family of related conventions rather than a single official standard. This guide follows Cite Them Right (Pears and Shields, 2022, 12th edition, Bloomsbury Academic) — the most widely cited authority and the variant this site’s generator produces.

The shortest version of Harvard (Cite Them Right 12th): author surname and year in the text with a comma between them, full entry in a Reference list at the back, sentence case for article and book titles, surname-and-initials author format, “Available at:” before every URL, hanging indent, and the word “and” — never ”&“.

What Harvard is and when you’ll use it

Harvard referencing grew out of late-nineteenth-century scientific writing, popularised by Harvard zoologist Edward Laurens Mark in an 1881 paper. The university never published a style guide of its own, and the convention spread without central governance. What “Harvard” means now depends on where you are: a UK business school, an Australian social-policy faculty, and a South African law journal can all call their style “Harvard” and prescribe slightly different details.

This is the central thing to understand before you cite anything. There is no governing body for Harvard the way the American Psychological Association governs APA or the Modern Language Association governs MLA. The most-cited authoritative reference is Cite Them Right by Richard Pears and Graham Shields, published by Bloomsbury Academic and now in its 12th edition (2022). It is what UK academic libraries reach for first, what many UK universities adopt as their default, and what this site’s generator produces. Every rule in this guide is keyed to that edition.

Other Harvard variants exist and most differ in small ways: whether the page abbreviation is “p.” or “p”, whether issue numbers sit in brackets or parentheses, whether article titles take single quotes or none, whether the comma between author and year is required. The differences are visual rather than structural. If your institution publishes its own Harvard style sheet — most UK universities do — check it before you submit, because the marker grades against that sheet, not Cite Them Right.

You will see Harvard required in UK undergraduate and postgraduate work across business, management, marketing, economics, sociology, education, geography, and law. Australian and South African universities follow similar practice. In the United States, Harvard is less common — APA dominates the social sciences there — but you may meet it in international journals and MBA coursework with UK ties. If your rubric says “Harvard” without naming a sheet, Cite Them Right 12th is the safest default.

In-text citations

Harvard’s in-text citation is author–date: the author’s surname and the publication year, separated by a comma, in parentheses. With a direct quote, add the page number after another comma. The format points the reader to one — and only one — entry in the Reference list at the back.

One author

Cite the surname and year. If the author’s name appears in the running sentence, the year goes in parentheses immediately after the name.

Parenthetical: Working memory capacity correlates with reading comprehension across age groups (Chen, 2021).

Narrative: Chen (2021) found that working memory capacity correlates with reading comprehension across age groups.

The comma between the surname and the year is mandatory in Cite Them Right (Pears and Shields, 2022). Some older Harvard sheets drop it; the 12th edition does not.

Two or three authors

For works with two or three authors, spell out every surname every time — there is no et al. shortcut at this threshold. Two authors are joined by and (never an ampersand). Three authors list all three surnames, joining the last two with and and no Oxford comma. Order matches the Reference list entry.

Two-author parenthetical: (Lin and Patel, 2022)

Two-author narrative: Lin and Patel (2022) argue that cross-modal attention emerges earlier than developmental psychology has typically allowed.

Three-author parenthetical: (Goldstein, Ramanathan and O’Connor, 2024)

Three-author narrative: Goldstein, Ramanathan and O’Connor (2024) report that overnight sleep amplifies procedural-skill consolidation in adolescents.

The two-author form is one of the clearest day-to-day differences between Harvard and APA. APA 7 uses & in the parenthetical and and in the narrative; Cite Them Right Harvard uses and in both. At three authors APA already collapses to et al. — Cite Them Right does not until four.

Four or more authors

Use the first author’s surname followed by et al. (set in roman — no italics) from the very first citation, starting with four or more authors. Three-author works spell out every surname every time, as shown above.

Every citation: (Smith et al., 2024)

Note the comma before the year and the period after al. Some Harvard variants set the threshold at three; Cite Them Right 12th uses et al. only at four authors and above.

Organization as author

Spell out the organisation in full the first time, optionally introducing an abbreviation, and use the abbreviation thereafter.

First: (World Health Organization (WHO), 2019)

Subsequent: (WHO, 2019)

Treat government agencies, professional bodies, and corporate authors the same way. If the abbreviation is well known in your field, use it from the start.

No named author

When a work has no identified author, move the title into the author slot. Italicise titles of standalone works (books, reports) and place article and web-page titles in double quotation marks.

Web article: (“Cognitive load and curriculum design”, 2023)

Book or report: (Reading proficiency and learning loss, 2023)

No date

If the source genuinely has no publication date, use no date (lowercase, two words). The same form appears in the Reference list entry.

Example: (Alvarez, no date)

Reserve no date for sources where the date is truly absent. A copyright year at the foot of a web page counts as a date; a “last updated” timestamp counts. Reach for no date only when nothing dateable appears anywhere.

Direct quotes (with page numbers)

Direct quotes require a page number. The format is (Author, Year, p. X) for a single page and (Author, Year, pp. X–Y) for a range. Note the space after p. and the en dash in the range.

Short quote: Working memory is “a flexible mental workspace, not a fixed bin of slots” (Chen, 2021, p. 47).

Quote from a website without page numbers: Alvarez (2023) writes that reading comprehension “outruns vocabulary growth in elementary readers” (para. 4).

For sources without pages, give the reader a way to find the passage: a paragraph number, a named section heading, or a timestamp for video and audio. If no locator is available, the parenthetical is just the author and year.

Citing multiple sources at once

When a single parenthetical points to multiple sources, separate them with semicolons. Cite Them Right (Pears and Shields, 2022) orders them chronologically — oldest first — rather than alphabetically.

Example: Three studies converge on this pattern (Chen, 2021; Lin and Patel, 2022; Goldstein, Ramanathan and O’Connor, 2024).

Same author, multiple works

When your Reference list contains two or more works by the same author, the in-text citation usually distinguishes them by year alone. When two works appeared in the same year, add lowercase letters after the year in both the in-text citation and the Reference list entry.

Different years: (Chen, 2019; Chen, 2021)

Same year: (Chen, 2021a; Chen, 2021b)

The letter assignment follows the order of the entries on the Reference list, which is alphabetised by title once author and year are tied.

Reference list format

The Reference list goes on its own page at the end of the paper, with the heading Reference list at the top — the singular list is Cite Them Right’s preferred form (Pears and Shields, 2022), though References is widely accepted and your institution may insist on it. Every source cited in the body appears here, and every entry here is cited at least once in the body.

Entries are alphabetised by the first author’s surname. Where there is no named author, alphabetise by the first significant word of the title, ignoring leading A, An, and The. Each entry uses a hanging indent — the first line flush left, continuation lines indented — so the eye can scan a column of surnames at the left margin. Spacing is conventionally single-spaced within an entry with a blank line between entries, but double-spacing throughout is acceptable too.

The author element inverts the first author’s name as surname-then-initials, with periods after each initial and no spaces between them: Chen, M.S. — not Chen, M. S. or Chen, MS. Subsequent authors follow the same format, joined by and before the final author. The year follows the author block in parentheses: Chen, M.S. (2021).

Titles divide along two lines. Book and journal titles are italicised and use sentence case — only the first word and any proper nouns are capitalised. Article and chapter titles sit inside double quotation marks, also in sentence case. The asymmetry is consistent: the container (book or journal) is italicised; the thing inside the container is quoted. Page ranges use p. for a single page and pp. for a range, with an en dash between numbers (pp. 87–104, not pp. 87-104).

For online sources, Cite Them Right (Pears and Shields, 2022) prefixes the URL with Available at: and follows it with (Accessed: May 20, 2026). DOIs take the same prefix but no access date, because DOIs are stable identifiers.

Source-type examples

The entries below use the fixture sources referenced throughout this guide and show each common source type exactly as this site’s generator renders it in Cite Them Right 12th format. Render them with a hanging indent in your own document.

A few details to notice. The book entry keeps the place of publication that APA 7 dropped. The chapter entry inverts the chapter authors’ names but presents the editor in given-name-first order, R.T. Morrison (ed.), with the editor abbreviation in lowercase parentheses — only the chapter authors get the surname-then-initials inversion. The web article italicises both the article title and the container (Psychology Today) with a comma between them. The journal entry’s volume sits before the bracketed issue, 19(2), with no italics on either. The web article uses Available at: and a parenthetical access date in month-day-year order; the journal article uses Available at: for the DOI but no access date, because a DOI is stable. The conference paper names the meeting, city, and date span without page numbers, since the talk wasn’t formally proceedings-published. The tool at / assembles the punctuation, italics, and Available at: prefixes for you, but the logic is what’s shown above.

Common mistakes

These five errors account for most of the marks students lose on Harvard assignments. Each shows the wrong version above the right one.

Missing the comma between author and year. Wrong: (Chen 2021) Right: (Chen, 2021)

Cite Them Right (Pears and Shields, 2022) requires the comma. Some older Harvard sheets omit it; the 12th edition does not. If your local sheet differs, follow it — but Cite Them Right’s form is what this guide and this generator produce.

Using ”&” instead of “and”. Wrong: (Lin & Patel, 2022) Right: (Lin and Patel, 2022)

The ampersand is APA’s habit. Cite Them Right Harvard spells out and in every position — parenthetical, narrative, and Reference list.

Year placed outside the parentheses or after the title. Wrong: Chen, M.S. The architecture of working memory (2021). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Right: Chen, M.S. (2021) The architecture of working memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The year follows the author block in parentheses, before the title. Putting the year anywhere else doesn’t fit author–date.

Title case on article and book titles. Wrong: “Sleep Consolidation Effects on Procedural Learning in Adolescents” Right: “Sleep consolidation effects on procedural learning in adolescents”

Cite Them Right uses sentence case for both article and book titles — only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised. Journal titles, by contrast, take title case because they are proper nouns naming a specific publication.

Missing “Available at:” or the access date on web sources. Wrong: Alvarez, S. (2023) How working memory predicts reading comprehension, Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/working-memory-reading-comprehension. Right: Alvarez, S. (2023) How working memory predicts reading comprehension, Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/working-memory-reading-comprehension (Accessed: May 20, 2026).

The Available at: prefix and the parenthetical access date are required for web sources in Cite Them Right (Pears and Shields, 2022). Dropping either makes the entry look like APA rather than Harvard.

How Harvard differs from other styles

Students often ask whether Harvard is just APA with the labels changed, or whether it is some flavour of MLA. The shortest answer is no on both counts — it is its own thing, and the differences show up in every entry. Here is the same journal article in three styles, using the fixtures above.

Cite Them Right Harvard: Goldstein, A., Ramanathan, P. and O’Connor, L. (2024) “Sleep consolidation effects on procedural learning in adolescents”, Journal of Cognitive Development, 19(2), pp. 87–104. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/cogdev0000412.

APA 7: Goldstein, A., Ramanathan, P., & O’Connor, L. (2024). Sleep consolidation effects on procedural learning in adolescents. Journal of Cognitive Development, 19(2), 87–104. https://doi.org/10.1037/cogdev0000412

MLA 9: Goldstein, Aaron, et al. “Sleep Consolidation Effects on Procedural Learning in Adolescents.” Journal of Cognitive Development, vol. 19, no. 2, 2024, pp. 87–104. https://doi.org/10.1037/cogdev0000412.

The three entries cite the same source but every visible detail differs. Harvard uses and between the last two surnames; APA uses an ampersand; MLA collapses three or more authors to et al. on the Reference list. Harvard wraps the article title in double quotes; APA leaves it bare; MLA also wraps it in double quotes but applies title case. Harvard and MLA italicise the journal title alone; APA italicises the journal title and the volume number together. Harvard prefixes the DOI with Available at:; APA and MLA do not.

The in-text citations differ too. Harvard reads (Goldstein, Ramanathan and O'Connor, 2024) — three authors spelled out in full, joined by and with no Oxford comma. APA 7 collapses to (Goldstein et al., 2024) because APA’s et al. threshold is three or more authors, where Cite Them Right Harvard’s is four or more. MLA reads (Goldstein et al. 88) with a page number and no year.

Use Harvard when your UK course, business-school module, or social-science journal asks for it; use APA when your psychology, education, or nursing course asks for it; use MLA when literature or modern languages ask for it. The styles encode the same scholarly logic — credit the source, let the reader find it — and choosing well is a question of audience, not correctness.

Editorial methodology and sources