How to Use Harvard Referencing Style in Your Dissertation?

When writing a dissertation, students are asked to provide references that give teachers an idea from where they have used the resources and if these resources are reliable or not. However, not every dissertation is written the same way and students are asked to provide references in the manner that teachers find appropriate.

 

Harvard is a very old and recognized style of referencing that is mainly used by university students to cite information sources in the thesis and dissertations.  There are two types of citations that are used in a dissertation; in-text as well as reference lists. While the in-text citations are used when students are directly quoting or paraphrasing a source, the reference lists are located at the end of the work and display full citations for sources used in the assignment. For students who do not know what Harvard style of referencing is, it is best that they take some time out to read about it so that they do not face any problem when their teachers assign them dissertation writing task and ask them to use this particular style of referencing.

Students need to understand the significance of using a referencing style and how it helps them present a better written and formatted paper to the teachers. The main reason why teachers ask them to provide reference lists or in-text citations is that with their help, the readers can locate original sources themselves if they want to read more about the research and understand how the author has used ideas in this regard. In addition to this, creating references also gives their teachers a chance to check out that they have not plagiarized or used ideas by someone else but they have conducted proper research and have provided proof of their hard work too.

Students must know that when they are citing sources, they must do so in a manner that has been recommended by the particular style. Here is Harvard reference list overview that provides them a glimpse to how it should be done:

·         Name of the author(s)

·         Year published

·         Title

·         City published

·         Publisher

·         Pages used

It is important for students to know that Harvard style reference list citations are always listed in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. If there are multiple resources that need to be mentioned by the same author, then the citations will be listed in order by the date of publication.

You must know that Harvard reference style would vary for print and newspaper articles, article found of a website or data base or books with edited versions but in all these cases, the basics would remain the same. The author’s name would always be mentioned beginning with the last name and the name of books, year of publication and page number would come later. It is important that students understand the basic Harvard referencing structure and it will become easy for them to use this style in their dissertation most easily.  The better they reference their paper, the better dissertation they will be able to present to the teacher.