Skip to Main Content

Harvard Referencing Guide

Using in-text citations

  • No specific font type or size required. Recommendations include Times New Roman, Arial, or Courier New for Windows, or Times, Helvetica, or Courier for Mac) at size 12.
  • The last name of the author(s) and the year of publication are generally needed.
  • They can appear within a sentence or at the end of a sentence before the full stop eg. .... this week (Brown 2019).
  • A page number is included for a direct quote. Place a colon directly after the year and separate multiple pages with a dash eg. (Dombrow 2014:155) or (Wardell 2018:32-33). There is no spacing between these elements. If there is no identifiable page number, provide another way for the reader to find the quoted information, eg. (heading or section name, paragraph, chapter, table or figure number).
  • if work is not yet published, use in press eg. Smith (in press).

The Learning Zone Quick Guides to Writing at University

In-text citation formats

In-text citations can be presented in two formats:

  • Information focused format - the citation is usually placed at the end of a sentence.
  • Author focused format -  the name of the author appears as part of the text, it need not be repeated in parenthetical citation. The date should immediately follow the author's name.
Example - Information focused
The wellbeing of workers is important (Rodrıguez-Garavito 2005), and managers must check in with their staff (Ngai 2005).
Example - Author focused
In the long run, Saarinen (2006) argues, development of tourism may not always be the most favourable use of natural and cultural resources …
  • If quoting and using a page number, add a colon next to the date, followed by the page number/ range.
Example
(Rodrıguez-Garavito 2005:14)
Saarinen (2006:35-36)

Citing quotations

Citing a direct quote

You must include page number(s) in the in-text citation when incorporating a direct quotation into a sentence. Use single quotation marks to enclose short quotations (sentence fragments, a sentence or sentences with less than 30 words). Fit quotations within your sentences, making sure the sentences are grammatically correct.

Examples
When Ladkin (2011:1136) suggests that knowledge of tourism and hospitality labour ‘clearly has a contribution to make to current wider societal debates’ she is, as we are, reflecting on the shifting phenomenon of hospitality work.  
There seems to be a 'consensus among researchers and policy makers that experiments constitute a gold standard in policy evaluation, although they are not a complete recipe for policy evaluation’ (Danielson 2007:381–382).

Citing a block quote

A direct quote that is more than 30 words long is usually indented from the text margin in a block format and use one size smaller font in single line spacing. Quotation marks are not needed.

Examples

New institutional studies of organisations in the 1970s and 1980s are largely characterised by an emphasis on diffusion, isomorphism, and decoupling:

The new institutionalism in organisation theory and sociology comprises a rejection of rational-actor models, and interest in institutions as independent variables, a turn towards cognitive and cultural explanations, and an interest in properties of supra individual units of analysis that cannot be reduced to aggregations or direct consequences of individuals' attributes or motives (DiMaggio and Powell 1991:8).

Modifying a direct quote

Ellipsis

If you need to omit a word or words from a quote, indicate this with an ellipsis (three dots) with a space before and after the ellipsis ( ... ). A direct quote should neither start nor end with an ellipsis. Words should only be omitted from a quote if they are superfluous to the reason why you are using the quote and the meaning of the quote is not affected by the change.

For example (in a block quote):

The modernist view of the individual voice has been debated:

As with an early modernist like Lautréamont ... the subject or “character” is always an unstable collective, perpetually on the make, on trial and in degeneration, as much as it is in productive process, riven by contradiction and interruption, and by virtue of the textual mosaic, it hosts a crazed polyphony with no “originary” voice (Campbell 2014:157).

 

Square brackets

If you need to add a word or words to a quote, or change the capitalisation of a word to fit with your syntax, put the word(s)/letter in square brackets [ ]. Words should only be added to a quote for explanatory reasons (e.g. a name might be added to explain who a pronoun is referencing).

For example:
The church is not the only setting where the soul may be nurtured, as '[t]he soul also finds sustenance in more domestic settings, like the family home' (Jones 1998:89).

Sic

If you need to indicate a misspelling, grammatical error or lack of inclusive language, insert the word [sic] (meaning so or thus) in square brackets immediately following the error but do not change the error in the quote.

For example (non-inclusive language):
According to Havelock (1986:63), the written word can be looked at as an extension of conversation where the author ‘writes down what he [sic] is saying so that another person can read what he [sic] says instead of just hearing it.’
For example (spelling):
The claim that ‘confiscation of these lands was both illegal and sacrilegious [sic]’ takes the approach that the church should be involved in these decisions (Hamilton and Strier 1996:165).

List of abbreviations and expressions

Acceptable abbreviations and expressions to use in citations and reference list include the following:
Abbreviation      Book or publication part
c circa - about
edn, edition
edn, rev, revised edition
2nd edn, second edition
2nd Aust. edn, second Australian edition
(ed) or (eds) editor or editors
et al. and others
in press a work in the process of publication
trans translator(s)
n.d. no date
n.p. no place
para., paras paragraph(s)
suppl. supplement
   
   

Author information

One author - in-text citation

Format
(Author last name Year)
Example
.....finding information (Richardson 2018) OR Richardson (2018) claimed that …

Two authors - in-text citation

Format
(Author last name and Author last name Year) - Use the word 'and' not '&' between names.
Example
(Black and Jacobsen 2020) OR Black and Jacobsen (2020) mention that ..

Three authors - in-text citation

Format
(First author last name et al. Year) OR First author last name et al. (Year)
Example
(Jackson et al. 2018) OR Jackson et al. (2018)

Group authors - in-text citation

Format 
(Group author name [abbreviation] Year)
Subsequent references
(Abbreviation Year) OR Abbreviation (Year)
Example
In text citation:
(Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade [DFAT] 2021) OR Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT 2021)

Authors with same surname - in-text citation

  • When citing sources written by authors with the same surname, include the authors’ initials in in-text citations.
Example
D Nguyen (2009) and L Nguyen (2009) both reported the same effects occurring in lakes and rivers.

Three or more authors, same first author - in-text citation

  • When referencing two or more sources published in the same year, and all these sources have the same first author and maybe even the same second, third authors, provide the names of enough authors in the in-text citation to show the difference.
Examples
(Larour, Morlighem, et al. 2012)
(Larour, Schiermeier, et al. 2012)
(Milillo, Rignot, Mouginot, Scheuchl, Li, et al. 2017)
(Milillo, Rignot, Mouginot, Scheuchl, Morlighem, et al. 2017)

Multiple works by same author(s) and same year - in-text citation

  • Works published in the same year by the same author are listed alphabetically by the title of the work and a lower-case letter (a, b, c, ...) is added immediately after the date, in both the reference list and in-text citations.
Example
She has written extensively on Australia – New Zealand relations (Dobell 2018a, 2018b).

Multiple works by same author - in-text citation

  • If you cite two or more works from the same author/s at one point in the text, arrange the sources in chronological order, starting with the earliest date.
Example
The process first identified by Watson (1960, 1966, 1968), shows..

Multiple sources cited at one point - in-text citation

  • When citing multiple works in the same in-text citation, use semicolons between citations. Place authors names in alphabetical order.
  • Enclose all the citations in one set of parentheses.
Example
Other researchers reported similar results (Abaza 2019; Black 2018; White and Jones 2017).

Works with no author - in-text citation

  • When the name of an author or authoring body is not shown, cite the reference by its title and the year. Use the first few words if the title is too long. 
Example
This was apparently not the case before about 1995 (The entrepreneur's guide to the law 1999).

Works with no publication date - in-text citation

  • For works without a date, write n.d. (for ‘no date’) instead of the year of publication.
Example
White and Jones (n.d.) reported similar results.
Other researchers reported similar results (White and Jones n.d.).
Subjects: Referencing
Tags: referencing
  
CRICOS Provider: 01241G TEQSA Provider Code: PRV12043 Australian University

Southern Cross University acknowledges and pays respect to the ancestors, Elders and descendants of the Lands upon which we meet and study.
We are mindful that within and without the buildings, these Lands always were and always will be Aboriginal Land.