In-text citations in Harvard style

Create a spot-on reference in Harvard

Select a source type:

Book Website Journal article Video (online)

Archival document Blog post Book Book chapter Complete reference Conference paper Copyright certificate Court case Dictionary Dictionary entry Disc Dissertation / Thesis Encyclopedia Encyclopedia article Extended abstract of dissertation Image Journal article Law / Act Newspaper article Patent Podcast Preprint Press release Religious text Report Social media post Software Standard Video (online) Video game Website

General rules of in-text citations

Within the Harvard citation style, a work is cited in text in parentheses (the traditional 'author-date' approach). This method assumes two schemes of in-text citations:

If the author's name is given in the fragment of the text:

Last Name of the author (year)

If the author's name is not given in the text:

(Last Name of the author year)

Compare the following examples:

Reference in a list of references:

Crespo, C. T., (2018). CuNbO₃ as a solar energy converter to fuel and electricity. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells [online]. 179, 305–311. [Viewed 26 January 2021]. Available from: doi: 10.1016/j.solmat.2017.12.025

In-text citation:

With the author indicated in the text fragment:

As stated by Crespo (2018), solar energy converters are <…>.

Without the author indicated in the text fragment:

Solar energy converters are <…> (Crespo 2018).

Number of authors in in-text citations

A bibliographic reference in a list of references under the Harvard system traditionally contains the full list of authors (except when the number of authors is very large: see in more detail in this article). In contrast, an in-text citation contains the names of up to three authors:

– if a source has one to three authors, give all authors' last names in an in-text citation;

– if a source has more than three authors, give only the first author's last name followed by 'et al.' in an in-text citation.

Templates of in-text citations:

1 author:

(Last Name year)

(Posen 1986)

2 to 3 authors:

(Last Name of the 1^st author, Last Name of the 2^nd author and Last Name of the 3^rd author year)

(Yurteri, Hartman and Marijnissen 2010)

4 authors or more:

(Last Name of the 1^st author et al. year)

(Watts et al. 2020)

Special cases

There are a number of special cases when the templates of Harvard style in-text citations above require being modified. Below, we provide an overview of the most widespread of such cases.

The bibliographic service Grafiati takes into account all these and other nuances of the Harvard referencing system and of other international citation styles: using our service, you will get correct bibliographic references and in-text citations without the need to analyse multiple specific aspects. To do this, just find the required source in the catalogues on our homepage or fill in the details manually, and we will take care of the rest.

Different authors with the same last name and year of publication

If multiple works cited have authors with the same last name but different initials and were published during the same year, add the authors' initials to their last names in the in-text citations:

NB: The last name and initials are given in the inverted form, just as in a list of references.

Same author and year of publication

If you are citing multiple works by the same author published during the same year, add a Latin minuscule to the year value in the in-text citation, just as in the list of references (see in detail here):

Citing multiple works in parentheses

If you are citing multiple works at once in parentheses, separate each element of the citation with a semicolon and order chronologically:

(Wiedeman 1982; Lanzkowsky 2011; Logan et al. 2019)

Citing particular pages, etc.

If you are citing a particlar page or range of pages (section, paragraph, etc.), separate this data in the in-text citation with a comma:

(Geuzendam 2019, pp. 136–137)

The web service Grafiati allows generating bibliographic references and in-text citations automatically online in accordance with the rules of the Harvard style. Once the required citation has been generated, you can click on it to copy and then paste it into your work, replacing 'XXXX' with the cited page number or range of pages.