Harvard is an author-date citation system used widely across the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and many South African universities. Unlike APA or MLA, it is not maintained by a single professional society. There is no canonical Harvard manual that every user follows. Instead, individual universities and journals publish their own Harvard guides with shared core conventions and small local differences. The variant RightMyWork applies follows the Cite-Them-Right conventions, which are the most widely adopted reference for Harvard across UK higher education.
The canonical reference for this variant is Cite Them Right by Richard Pears and Graham Shields, published by Bloomsbury Academic. Cite Them Right keeps a public companion at citethemrightonline.com. This blog post is an orientation. It is not a rulebook and does not replace Cite Them Right when you need the canonical answer to a specific question.
Where Harvard came from and who uses it
The Harvard system is named after Harvard University, where it is generally credited as having been used in the late nineteenth century by Edward Laurens Mark, a professor of anatomy, in a paper citing sources by author and year of publication in the running text. The convention spread through the natural and social sciences over the following century and became one of the dominant author-date systems alongside what eventually became APA.
Today, Harvard is widely used across the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Europe, particularly in disciplines that have not adopted APA, MLA, or Chicago. Business, management, education, nursing, environmental sciences, geography, and many social science departments use Harvard or a Harvard variant. Because there is no single canonical Harvard manual, the specific conventions can vary between institutions; always check your department’s guidance for local rules that override or supplement the Cite-Them-Right defaults.
Cite Them Right itself is a comprehensive citation guide that covers Harvard alongside APA, MLA, Chicago, Vancouver, OSCOLA, and several other styles. It has gone through many editions since its first publication and is regularly updated to reflect changes in publishing and source types. It is the variant RightMyWork enforces when you pick Harvard on the upload screen.
The mechanics: spelling, punctuation, and usage
Cite-Them-Right Harvard is a UK English style and inherits UK conventions for spelling, punctuation, and usage. Where it makes its own editorial decisions, the variant tends towards consistency with broader UK academic publishing norms.
Spelling
UK English spelling is the default. Words ending in ‘our’ rather than ‘or,’ in ‘ise’ rather than ‘ize,’ and in ‘re’ rather than ‘er.’ Where multiple UK spellings exist, the Oxford English Dictionary is generally the tiebreaker, although individual institutions sometimes specify a different authority.
Punctuation
UK punctuation is the convention. Single quotation marks are the primary mark for direct quotations, with double quotation marks reserved for a quotation inside a quotation. Commas and full stops sit outside the closing quotation mark unless the punctuation belongs to the quoted material itself. This is the opposite of US punctuation and the most visible difference for writers moving between the two.
The serial comma (the comma before ‘and’ or ‘or’ in a list of three or more items) is optional in Cite-Them-Right Harvard; consistency across the document is what matters. Long quotations of approximately forty or more words are set as block quotations: indented from the left margin without quotation marks, with the in-text citation after the final punctuation of the quote.
Numbers
Whole numbers below 10 are typically written as words, and figures are used from 10 onwards. Numbers that begin a sentence are written as words. Numbers paired with units of measurement, in tables, in statistical contexts, or in technical writing where numbers are dense, are written as figures. The specific cases are covered in Cite Them Right.
Capitalisation
Titles of books and journals use title case in running text. Article and chapter titles in the reference list use sentence case, with capitalisation only for the first word, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon. Journal names in the reference list use title case. This split between title case for some elements and sentence case for others mirrors APA more closely than MLA, which uses title case across the board.
Italics
Italic is used for book titles, journal names, newspaper names, and other published works in running text and in the reference list. Article titles are not italic. Within in-text citations, the abbreviation et al. is italicised under Cite-Them-Right conventions. The italicisation of et al. is a small but visible marker that distinguishes Cite-Them-Right Harvard from APA at a glance.
The citation system, at a glance
Cite-Them-Right Harvard is an author-date system with a distinctive twist: when you cite a specific idea, finding, or passage, the in-text citation includes a page number, whether you are quoting directly or paraphrasing. This is one of the features that sets it apart from APA, where the page number is required only for direct quotations.
Each cited source appears in two places: a brief citation in the running text and a full entry in the reference list at the end of the document. The reference list is alphabetical by first author surname, formatted with a hanging indent. The header at the top is ‘Reference list’ or ‘References.’
In-text citations
Cite-Them-Right in-text citations contain three elements: author surname, year of publication, and page number. The standard format is (Author, Year, p. X) for a single page or (Author, Year, pp. X–Y) for a page range.
Parenthetical citations
A parenthetical citation tucks the three elements into parentheses at the end of the supporting sentence. Commas separate the elements. The closing punctuation of the sentence comes after the closing parenthesis.
Example: The narrator’s reliability begins to dissolve in the second movement of the novel (Okonkwo, 2022, p. 47).
Narrative citations
A narrative citation weaves the author surname into the sentence and follows it with the year and page number in parentheses. The page number is still included for paraphrase, in keeping with Cite-Them-Right convention.
Example: Okonkwo (2022, p. 47) argues that the narrator’s reliability begins to dissolve in the second movement of the novel.
Multiple authors
For one or two authors, all author names appear in every citation: (Okonkwo and Patel, 2022, p. 47). For three or more authors, Cite Them Right uses the first author’s surname followed by et al. in italic from the first citation onwards: (Okonkwo et al., 2022, p. 47). The italic is the Cite-Them-Right styling and is preserved through the document.
Examples to internalise
Four in-text citations following Cite-Them-Right conventions. All authors and works are invented for illustration.
- One author, parenthetical, paraphrase: The setting carries the mood of the chapter (Stein, 2019, p. 122).
- One author, narrative, direct quotation: Stein (2019, p. 122) writes that the chapter rests on a single image.
- Three or more authors, italic et al.: The argument turns on one sentence (Choi et al., 2021, p. 88).
- Two sources together, separated by a semicolon: Recent work has revisited the question (Patel, 2022, p. 12; Stein, 2019, p. 145).
The reference list
The reference list sits at the end of the document, starts on a new page, and carries the heading ‘Reference list’ or ‘References.’ Entries are alphabetical by first author surname, formatted with a hanging indent. The reference list is closed: every entry must correspond to a citation in the running text, and every citation must correspond to an entry.
Each entry follows the same four-part skeleton common to author-date systems: who, when, what, where. The exact shape depends on the source type. The Cite-Them-Right reference list places the year in parentheses directly after the author, uses sentence case for article and chapter titles, title case for journal and book titles, and italic for book and journal titles.
Examples to internalise
Four sample reference list entries, one of each common type. All authors and works are invented.
- Book: Stein, M. (2019) Quiet revisions: editing as a craft. London: Bracewell Press.
- Journal article: Okonkwo, A.C. (2022) ‘Reading between the citations,’ Journal of Humanistic Inquiry, 14(2), pp. 121–144.
- Chapter in an edited book: Choi, J. (2021) ‘On voice,’ in Stein, M. (ed.) The shape of scholarly prose. London: Bracewell Press, pp. 88–112.
- Online article with DOI: Patel, R. (2022) ‘Form and feeling in recent criticism,’ Modern Letters Review, 8(4), pp. 12–34. doi: 10.1234/mlr.2022.084.
Things to remember about the reference list
- Alphabetical order by first author surname. Two entries by the same author are ordered by year, oldest first.
- Hanging indent on every entry. First line flush left, continuation lines indented.
- Sentence case for article and chapter titles. Title case for book and journal titles.
- Italic for book titles and journal names. Article titles sit in single quotation marks.
- Year in parentheses directly after the author, before the title.
- DOIs preferredto URLs when both exist. The ‘doi:’ prefix is retained in Cite Them Right, rather than the URL form APA uses.
Footnotes in Cite-Them-Right Harvard
Cite-Them-Right Harvard does not use footnotes for citation. Citations stay in the in-text author-date system. Footnotes (or endnotes) are reserved for content notes that elaborate on a point in the main text or for brief explanatory asides that would interrupt the flow of the prose. Used sparingly. If you find yourself reaching for footnotes often, the paper usually wants restructuring rather than additional notes.
What RightMyWork does with Harvard (Cite Them Right)
When you pick Harvard on the upload screen, the editor applies Cite-Them-Right conventions across your document. In-text citations are checked for the (Author, Year, p. X) format, including a page number on paraphrase as well as direct quotation. The et al. abbreviation is italicised. Reference list entries are reviewed for sentence-case article titles, title-case book and journal titles, italic on the right elements, and the year-in-parentheses placement. Spelling and punctuation are pushed towards UK English conventions.
Every change lands as a tracked change in Word. Citations that reference works missing from the reference list are flagged in a comment rather than guessed at. Where the editor cannot confidently apply a rule (an unusual source type, an institution-specific variation), it surfaces a query so you can confirm the local convention.
Where to go from here
For the rules in their canonical form, citethemrightonline.com is the online companion to the printed Cite Them Right guide, and your university or department library will often hold a current edition. If your institution follows a different Harvard variant, ask the library or your supervisor for the specific guidance, and let the support team know so we can flag local conventions to apply.
When you are ready to apply Cite-Them-Right Harvard to your draft, the upload form on the homepage is one click away. The first 3,000 words on a new account are free.