Finally Harvard referencing has big advantages because it
tends to discourage authors from proliferating and expanding
‘subtexts’ in footnotes or endnotes. In any notes system the
temptation for authors to create learned subtexts is normally
irresistible. Critical asides and authorial digressions multiply,
along with methods comments, lower level data, debates with
opponents, and similar materials. Where authors rely on notes,
it often looks as if the main text is surrounded by a forest of
subsidiary commentaries, especially in academic books or arti-
cles with long footnotes at the bottom of the page, which some-
times squeeze the main text into less than half a page. Harvard
referencing should prevent this completely, and yet it is still
possible to put in special endnotes to include some bulky but
indispensable subsidiary information (see below). Harvard ref-
erencing is attractive for publishers and journals precisely
because it discourages subtexts, forcing you to make up your
mind about what is key in your sources and what is not. Being
constrained to pursue a single line of argument through your
text can improve the clarity of your writing and your thought.
Many students who are used to notes systems anticipate that
if they try Harvard referencing they will have four main diffi-
culties. In fact these commonly cited ‘problems’ are all familiar
ones, to which easy solutions exist:
◆If you have to reference a large amount of literature at one
point in your text, more than three or four works, then (but
only then) it is permissible to add an endnote to accommodate
the references. This exception violates the one-stop look-up
rule, but it is preferable to having an unsightly wodge of
referencing disrupting your main text. If you find that this
is a common problem in your work, you may want to check
whether you are over-referencing.
◆Primary texts and older works may require unconventional
referencing different from that shown above. For instance, you
may want to refer to books, chapters and verses in sources like
the Bible or the work of pre-modern philosophers, or to the
acts, scenes and lines in plays. This problem arises because the
page numbers for a classic work or other specialized text
inevitably vary from one edition to another. Yet you want to
make references in such a way that other people can find the
128 ◆AUTHORING A PHD