Academic writing involves the writing of essays that are normally of scholarly nature. Invariably the text in all such essays refers to materials and ideas that actually belong to others. This system of referencing is called citation. Such a system of citation helps the writer to be consistent and accurate and it makes it possible for readers to identify, review and locate the materials cited in the essay. One such style is the Harvard citation format. This citation format is used in Bournemouth University.

The Harvard citation format provides that all statements, views and inferences taken from the work of another author should be cited. This stipulation applies whether the cited material is quoted verbatim, paraphrased or summarized. In- text citation refers to the authors name and the date of publication. In case the exact date of publication is not known an approximate date preceded by ‘ca’ is provided. In case it is not possible to give even an approximate date, then ‘n.d’ should be mentioned to indicate that no date is available. In cases where the statement or idea is an anonymous source the same is indicated as ‘anon’.

There are nuances to in- text citation depending on the situation. For instance, if citations within the text involve authors with the same family name, then it becomes necessary to use the initials of the authors to distinguish one from the other. When the essay contains text that has been quoted verbatim, then such text must be contained within quotation marks and the citation must include the page number from which the text has been taken. This makes referencing easy for anyone who wishes to review the essay.

Other than the in- text citation, the end of the essay contains a complete list of references giving details of all the in- text citations. Referencing serves many purposes. Basically referencing shows readers who subsequently review the essay that there is no plagiarism. It enables readers who review the essay, to do further research using the materials cited in the essay.

This style requires that the reference list gives complete bibliographic details as well as the page numbers from which the cited text has been taken. The way in which the referencing is done slightly differs depending on the source. In the case of a book bibliographic detail refers to the author/ editor, the year the book was published, the name of the book, edition, volume number if any and place and name of publisher. This information is normally found in proximity to the title page.

In the case of citations from journals, the reference will include the name of the author, the year the article was published, the title of the article, the name of the journal, its volume and issue numbers and the page numbers from which the material used was taken.

For Harvard citations from electronic sources, the referencing is a little different. In these cases the reference will have all the details given in the case of books and journals and in addition will also contain the name of the database or the URL, which is the web address, and the date on which the material cited was accessed.