◆ For journal articles the bibliography reference must include
in sequence: author surname, full forename, second
forename initial, year date, article title, journal title, volume
number, issue number, and pagination. I have included vol.
and no. here because some journals and publishers require it.
Others will ask for the volume number and issue number
without these labels, separated by a colon, as 4: iii. But
deleting or replacing elements that are already in your
references is much easier using ‘find and replace’ facilities on
your word processor than it is inserting them from scratch.
◆ For magazine or newspaper articles use the same sequence as
for journal articles, but replace the volume and issue
numbers with the day and month date of publication.
◆ For books the bibliography reference must include in
sequence: author surname, full forename, second forename
initial, year date, book title (and subtitle if there is one),
place of publication, and publisher. Add any essential
information on the edition or translation that readers might
need to know. For a republished later edition of a work give
the first publication date at the end of the reference, as:
‘Originally published in 1847’.
One great advantage of the Harvard system is that it provides
a clean-looking text which includes immediate information for
an expert reader (who will often know what source is being cited
from the in-text reference alone). Yet it also gives easy access to
more detailed information. The second great advantage is that
every thesis has to have a comprehensive bibliography organ-
ized on exactly these lines anyway. Thus with any notes system
you have to provide referencing for each source at least twice,
once in a bibliography format, and then again in notes format,
as well as repeating note citations of the same source. The
Harvard system eliminates all this duplication and along with it
the difficult ‘version control’ problems which often arise when-
ever you have two different citations of the same source. If you
find that you have a source wrong there is only one place to
change the reference under Harvard (although you will need to
update the in-text referencing if the author name or year date is
altered). You also do not have notes taking up some of the valu-
able space within the doctorate’s word limit.
WRITING CLEARLY◆ 127