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Which Harvard this is
Harvard is a family of author-date styles, not one manual. There is no official Harvard guide, so universities publish their own versions, and they differ in small ways: full stops after initials, brackets around the year, the wording before a URL.
This generator follows Cite Them Right (13th ed.), the guide many universities adopt as their Harvard or base their own on. If your university’s guide disagrees on a detail, follow your guide; the pattern below makes the differences easy to spot.
A Harvard reference, piece by piece
- Author
- Last name, then initials with no spaces or full stops between them: Hershner, S.D. Two or three authors are joined with “and”; Cite Them Right lists every author in the reference.
- (Year)
- Straight after the name, in brackets, with no full stop after it. A work with no date gives (no date).
- Title
- Capitals only for the first word and names. Italic for a book, a report or a web page; in single quotation marks for an article or a chapter, with the journal or book it sits in in italics.
- Where to find it
- The publisher for a book (no city); volume(issue) and pp. for an article; for anything online, “Available at:” the URL or DOI, then “(Accessed:” the day you viewed it, for pages that can change.
Real Harvard references from the generator
Journal article, from its DOI
Hershner, S.D. and Chervin, R.D. (2014) ‘Causes and consequences of sleepiness among college students’, Nature and Science of Sleep, 6, pp. 73–84. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2147/NSS.S62907.
In-text
(Hershner and Chervin, 2014, p. 76)
Book, from its ISBN
Walker, M. (2017) Why we sleep: unlocking the power of sleep and dreams. Scribner.
In-text
(Walker, 2017, p. 112)
Web page, from its link
Bernstein, M. (2002) 10 tips on writing the living web. Available at: https://alistapart.com/article/writeliving/ (Accessed: 3 November 2026).
YouTube video, under its channel
TED (2019) Sleep is your superpower | Matt Walker | TED. 3 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MuIMqhT8DM (Accessed: 3 November 2026).
The article ends with its DOI and no access date, because a DOI always leads to the same article. The web page and the video carry the date they were viewed, since either can change or vanish.
Harvard in-text citations
A Harvard citation in your sentence gives the author’s last name, a comma, the year, and the page when you quote or point to one place: (Walker, 2017, p. 112). Type the page beside the in-text citation and the generator adds p. or pp.
- Two or three authors: (Hershner and Chervin, 2014). Four or more: the first and et al., (Smith et al., 2021).
- Name the author in your sentence and only the year and page stay in brackets: Walker (2017, p. 112) argues that...
- No author: the title in italics, or in single quotation marks for an article, as it starts the reference.
- Two works by the same author in one year: 2017a and 2017b, in the reference list and the text. The generator letters them when both are in your list.
The reference list
Cite Them Right calls the list at the end a reference list: every source you cited, in alphabetical order by the author’s last name, or by the title when there is no author. A bibliography, in this style, also includes what you read but did not cite; use one only if your module asks for it.
Copy all under the tool gives the list in that order, with a hanging indent that Word and Google Docs keep, and Download .docx makes a Reference list page on its own. In the Format app, Harvard is part of Pro; here it is free for everyone. More examples are in the Harvard guides.
No ads. No sign-up. Your list stays in your browser.
You are writing your own paper, and the tool that formats your sources should not compete with it for your attention. So there are no ads here, nothing to sign up for, and your lists are kept in this browser instead of on our server.
The generator is paid for by the Format app, which some students choose to pay for, not by ads.
Questions
Is this the same Harvard my university uses?
It is Cite Them Right (13th ed.). Many universities use it as written; others publish a local version with small changes. Compare one reference from your university’s guide with the generator’s and adjust any punctuation that differs.
What is the difference between Harvard and APA?
Both cite the author and year in the text. Harvard writes “and” where APA writes &, puts no full stop after the year in the reference, writes article titles in single quotation marks, and adds “Available at:” and an access date for online sources, which APA leaves out.
Why does a web page need an access date?
Pages change and disappear, so the date tells your reader which version you saw. Cite Them Right asks for it on web pages and videos, not on articles found by a DOI.
Is the citation generator free?
Yes, every style, with no account and no limit on citations you type in. Looking up a link, DOI or ISBN is free too; a network that looks up a lot in a short time is asked for a quick human check.
Where are my citations kept?
In this browser only, in as many named lists as you like, until you clear or delete them. What you search for or look up goes to Format’s server, which asks Crossref, Open Library or the page itself. Nothing about you goes with it.
Are there ads?
No. The generator shows no ads and needs no sign-up. Your lists are kept in this browser, not on our server, and what you look up is used only to find the source.