Most Harvard referencing problems are not about understanding the theory. They happen when you are staring at an actual source in front of you and trying to turn it into the right line in your reference list. Does the edition go after the title? Do you include the place of publication? What do you do when a website has no author? This guide works through real examples source by source, so you can copy the pattern and adapt it to your own reading. If you would rather check your formatting as you go, the free Harvard referencing generator builds the reference for you once you enter the details, which is useful for a quick sense check before you submit.
A quick warning before the examples: Harvard is not one single fixed style. Many universities in the UK use a version of Harvard, but each institution tweaks small details such as punctuation, capitalisation and whether the year goes in brackets. Always check your own university or department guide alongside this page, and follow that version if there is a difference. The examples below follow the common UK Harvard pattern used by most institutions.
Book with one author
The standard pattern for a book is: Author surname, Initial(s). (Year) Title in italics. Edition if it is not the first. Place of publication: Publisher.
Example: Cottrell, S. (2019) The study skills handbook. 5th edn. London: Red Globe Press.
Notice three things. First, only the surname and initials appear, never the full first name. Second, the edition is included because this is the fifth edition, and the edition you actually read matters because page numbers and content change between editions. Third, the title is in sentence case, which means only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised, even if the book cover uses capital letters for every word.
Book with two or three authors and an edited book
For two or three authors, list all of them in the order they appear on the title page, separated by commas and with “and” before the last name.
Example: Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2019) Business research methods. 5th edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
An edited book is different because the editor has collected chapters by different people. Use (ed.) or (eds.) after the name to show the role.
Example: Saunders, M.N.K., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (eds.) (2023) Research methods for business students. 9th edn. Harlow: Pearson.
If you only used one chapter from an edited book, reference the chapter, not the whole book. Give the chapter author and chapter title first, then “In” followed by the editor, the book title, page numbers for the chapter and the publisher details. This matters because your marker needs to find the exact pages you used, not search an entire edited collection.
Journal article
Journals are where a lot of marks are lost, usually because the volume, issue and page numbers get mixed up or missed out. The pattern is: Author surname, Initial(s). (Year) “Title of article”, Title of journal in italics, Volume number (Issue number), pp. page range.
Example: Dweck, C.S. (2017) “The journey to children’s mindsets and beyond”, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), pp. 139-184.
The article title stays in plain text with quotation marks in many UK versions, while the journal title is italicised. Do not swap them round. If you accessed the article online and it has a DOI, many universities now ask you to add the DOI or the URL at the end. Check your guide on this point, because practice varies. If there is no page range because the journal uses article numbers instead, use the article number in place of the pages.
Website and webpage
Websites cause trouble because the information is often incomplete. Use this pattern: Author or organisation surname, Initial(s) or organisation name. (Year page was created or last updated) Title of page in italics. Available at: URL (Accessed: date you viewed it).
Example: Department for Education (2024) School behaviour and attendance: parental responsibility measures. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/behaviour-and-attendance-parental-responsibility-measures (Accessed: 12 March 2026).
When there is no named person, the organisation that owns the site is treated as the author, as in the example above. If there is genuinely no author and no organisation you can identify, many guides tell you to use the page title as the starting point instead. Always include the access date for web content because pages change or disappear, and your marker needs to know when you saw that version. Avoid pasting a long search results link or a link that only works when you are logged in through your university library. Use the stable public URL where one exists.
Report, chapter and film: three more you will meet often
Report: Treat an organisation as the author in most cases. For example: Office for National Statistics (2023) Labour market overview, UK: December 2023. Available at: the report URL (Accessed: date). Reports from bodies such as charities, think tanks and government departments follow the same logic as websites if you read them online, or the book pattern if you read a printed copy.
Newspaper article: Author surname, Initial(s). (Year) “Title of article”, Name of newspaper in italics, Day and month, pp. page numbers if printed, or Available at: URL (Accessed: date) if online. Newspaper titles are often missed out by mistake, so double check you have included the newspaper name itself, not just the headline.
Film or video: Title in italics (Year) Directed by first name and surname. [Film]. Place: Studio or distributor. For online video such as a lecture recording or a YouTube video from an official channel, many guides ask for the uploader as author, the year, the title in italics, the platform and the access date. The exact pattern differs more here than for books, so this is one to check carefully in your own guide.
For a fuller explanation of how citations inside your paragraphs link to these full references, see our guide to Harvard in-text citations and reference lists, which covers the rules for quoting and paraphrasing.
Common mistakes that cost marks
- Listing sources you did not cite. In Harvard, the reference list normally includes only works you cited in the text. A separate bibliography, if your tutor asks for one, is a different list. Do not pad the reference list with background reading you never mentioned.
- Getting the order wrong. The reference list is alphabetical by author surname. Mixing up the order makes it look careless and makes sources harder for your marker to find.
- Forgetting italics. Book titles and journal titles are italicised. Article titles and chapter titles are not. This single detail is one of the quickest visual checks a marker makes.
- Copying a reference from another essay. If you copy the formatting from a source that used a different Harvard version, you import its punctuation and ordering too. Rebuild the reference using your own university pattern instead.
- Missing access dates and incomplete web details. A bare URL with no author, year or title is not a reference. Your reader needs enough information to identify what you used even if the link stops working.
- Inconsistent punctuation. Pick one version and apply it throughout. Random full stops, commas and capital letters suggest the list was assembled from several different styles.
Referencing also sits alongside the wider writing task. If you are short of time or you are unsure whether your argument and structure are strong enough before you worry about the final formatting, our assignment help page explains the support available, with prices from £20 per 1,000 words. Getting the structure right first and the references right last is usually the most efficient order to work in.
Ebooks, chapters and trickier sources
Ebook: Most UK guides, including Cite Them Right Harvard, tell you to reference an ebook like the print book if the pagination is the same. If it is not, add the DOI if there is one, or the URL and an access date, in the same way as a website. Do not name the device or app you read it on.
Multiple works by the same author in one year: Distinguish them with small letters after the year, in the reference list and in your citations: (Smith, 2024a) and (Smith, 2024b). Order the letters by the alphabetical order of the titles.
No author and no date: If there is no personal author, use the organisation as author. If there is genuinely no date, write (no date) where the year would go instead of guessing one. Both problems are common with web pages, which is why the access date matters so much for online sources.
Frequently asked questions
Do I include a DOI for a journal article? Where an article has a DOI, most current guides prefer it to a long URL, presented as a link beginning https://doi.org/. You do not normally add an access date alongside a DOI.
Is the reference list included in my word count? Typically the reference list itself is not counted, but in-text citations are. Allowances vary, and many courses allow a small margin over the stated limit, so check your assignment brief.
Do I still include the place of publication? Most UK Harvard versions still expect it for books, although the newest Cite Them Right edition has dropped it. This is exactly the kind of small difference your own university guide settles, so follow that version consistently.
What if I only read about a source in another book? That is secondary referencing. Cite it as (Original author, year, cited in Author you read, year) and list only the source you actually read.
Try it free
The fastest way to learn the patterns above is to build a few references yourself and compare the result. Try the free Harvard referencing generator with one book, one journal article and one website from your current module. Enter the details carefully, check the output against the examples on this page and against your university guide, and then paste the finished reference into your list in alphabetical order. Doing it source by source as you write, rather than in a rush the night before the deadline, is the habit that prevents most referencing errors.