Harvard Guide

Harvard Guide

During academic studies or research students or researchers may be required to write academic papers or research reports detailing findings. However, these reports may contain information from other researchers or academicians, and as such it is necessary in academic circles to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable in other scholars’ works. These ideas may be picked from journal articles, books, websites, radio and television broadcasts as well as newspaper or magazine articles. Appreciation of the use of these works should appear within the text of any academic paper or research report. This appreciation is known as in-text citation.

Referencing is another form of showing appreciation for the use of other people’s work. This is usually done at the end of the written in a list of references known as references. Lack of this appreciation within your work may suggest that the ideas within your work are original and exclusive to you as a writer. This may constitute plagiarism in academic circles-an academic offense punishable by institutions of higher learning. In case of researchers, there work may get discredited and declared un-worthy for publication. Citations and reference lists are supposed to demonstrate that your work was based on other people’s ideas, whilst acknowledging other people’s work and enabling other people that may use your work to easily trace the sources of information that you used to develop your ideas.

There are various referencing and citation styles used within academic circles. Amongst these methods, is the Harvard writing style of referencing; which requires the student to cite (formally recognize other people’s work within the text of the academic paper) as well as offer a bibliography list at the end of the document (a list with all the cited works and details that can allow them to be traced).

The Harvard writing style of citation is the most straightforward method of citing because all that is needed is to mention the date of publication of the work as well as the author of the work cited. An example of citation in Harvard writing style would be as follows: [There are about

HARVARD GUIDE

16000 children living under poverty in America despite the great technological and economic advancements in the nation (Rowley 2008).]. This is an example of the Harvard writing style way of recognizing an author known as Rowley, whose work indicating the stated information was published in the year 2008. The reader can thereafter easily trace the full details of the cited work by referring to the bibliography list at the end of the work with full details of the work as per the requirements of the Harvard writing style. According to requirements of the Harvard writing style, if the work was done by two authors the citation would be as follow: [According to Beck and Rowley (2008, pg 34), there are about 16000 children living under poverty in America despite the great technological and economic advancements in the nation Row.]. Page numbers may also de included in Harvard writing style as shown.

Alternatively, in the Harvard writing style the citation may come at the end of the cited work as follows: [There are about 16000 children living under poverty in America despite the great technological and economic advancements in the nation (Beck & Rowley 2008, pg 34).]. In citations of works with three or more authors, the Harvard writing style requires that the name of the first author is followed by ‘et al’ a Latin term that means “and other”, in order to show that the work was done by many authors-more than three authors. The appropriate example for the Harvard writing style would be as follows: [There are about 16000 children living under poverty in America despite the great technological and economic advancements in the nation (Rowley et al, 2008).]

In some instances the student or researcher is unable to identify the author. In the Harvard writing style, the only option would be to use the title of the work instead of the author’s name. An example in Harvard writing style would be as follows: [There are about 16000 children living under poverty in America despite the great technological and economic advancements in the nation (Children and Poverty in America, 2008).]. In this case the title of the work written by an unknown author is “Children and Poverty in America”. In other cases the student or researcher may be unable to establish or trace the original primary source of the work, but it may be cited within the text of some other work used in the research or writing of the academic work.

According to Harvard writing style the writer should cite both the original work that s/he has not seen as well as the work in which s/he read its citation. [According to Rowley, (2008, quoted in Johnson, 1999, pg 43) there are about 16000 children living under poverty in America despite the great technological and economic advancements in the nation]. Direct quotations within the Harvard writing style need to be encapsulated in quotation marks and the pages of the direct quotation included in the brackets of citation. An example in the Harvard writing style would be as follows: [“There are about 16000 children living under poverty in America despite the great technological and economic advancements in the nation” (Rowley, 2008, pg 34)].

HARVARD GUIDE

Finally, according to the Harvard writing style the writer should include a bibliography list at the end of the work. This list is a mandatory inclusion for Harvard writing style. The list offers evidence of all the material used in writing the work. In Harvard writing style the list should have all sources arranged in an alphabetical order. The Harvard writing style requires that the list offer details including author/s name/s date of publication or production of material, title of work and the publishing or production house. Students well versed with the APA style of writing will notice that the Harvard writing style is closely related to the APA style of writing.