Harvard Referencing Rules Explained (UK Cite Them Right)
The Harvard referencing rules UK universities actually apply: in-text citations, reference list order, multiple authors, no date, secondary sources and websites.
What Harvard referencing is
Harvard is an author-date system. In the text you give the author surname and year, such as (Smith, 2024). In the reference list you give full details, ordered alphabetically by author surname. Most UK universities follow the Cite Them Right variant, so that is the one used throughout this guide.
In-text citations
One author: (Smith, 2024). Two authors: (Smith and Jones, 2024). Three or more: (Smith et al., 2024). Direct quotation adds a page number: (Smith, 2024, p. 17). If the author's name is part of your sentence, only the year goes in brackets: Smith (2024) argues that...
Books
Smith, J. (2024) Title of book. 3rd edn. London: Publisher. Italicise the title. Only include the edition when it is not the first.
Journal articles
Smith, J. and Jones, A. (2024) 'Title of article', Journal Name, 12(3), pp. 45-60. Italicise the journal name, not the article title. Include the DOI if your department asks for it.
Websites
Organisation (2024) Title of page. Available at: https://example.com (Accessed: 14 March 2026). The access date matters because web pages change.
Book chapters
Smith, J. (2024) 'Chapter title', in Jones, A. (ed.) Book title. London: Publisher, pp. 20-35.
No author, no date
Where there is no personal author, use the organisation. Where there is no date, write (no date) in both the citation and the reference. Never invent a year from a copyright notice at the foot of a page.
Secondary referencing
If you read Jones quoting Smith and cannot get to Smith, cite it as (Smith, 1998, cited in Jones, 2024) and list only Jones in the reference list. UK markers penalise heavy secondary referencing, so find the original where you can.
Same author, same year
Add letters: (Smith, 2024a), (Smith, 2024b). Order them alphabetically by title in the reference list and use the same letters consistently in the text.
Building your list quickly
Our free Harvard referencing generator produces Cite Them Right entries for books, journal articles, websites and chapters, along with the matching in-text citation.