Template:Harvard citation documentation

This template allows you to link inline citation using Harvard citations (a form of short citations using parenthetical references) to their corresponding full bibliographic citations. If an article is already using a reasonably consistent type of inline citations, and you want to change the style (either to or from this type), then you should discuss that change on the article's talk page first.

How to use
In the body of the article:
 * or  or

If more than four authors, truncate the list to the first four.

In the references section (or in an earlier footnote):
 * or , etc |   | ... other appropriate parameters ...

or
 * ... other appropriate parameters ...  (harv is not required when using Citation)

Parameters
Up to four authors can be given as parameters. (If there are more than 4 authors only the first 4 should be listed. See, below.) The last required parameter is the year of publication.

(All these examples have links which operate. Click on highlighted text.)

The optional parameters p, pp and loc can be used to indicate the location in the source. All of the Harvard citation templates use the same parameters to indicate page numbers or other locations in the text. For single pages, use p; and for multiple pages (such as ranges), use pp. Use of p for multiple pages or pp for single pages can cause cite errors.

The optional parameter ref is used to specify the reference value that links the short citation to the full citation. This parameter is usually not necessary and it is more common to use sfnRef or harvid in the reference section. If you specify none no hyperlink is created. Note that, if one does not want the link, it is always possible to simply not use the template. (Not available in sfn and similar templates.)

Aliases
The parameters page pages and Ref exist as aliases for p pp and ref respectively.

Reference section
The links in the Harvard citation templates can find anchors in, and similar templates. To make the anchor, parameter harv must be set. This is not necessary for citation, but is normally necessary for the others.

{{markup|

Author-date citation templates
There are several templates used to create in-text citations; they differ in the use and placement of parenthesis, in the separator before the page or location and in whether a terminal full stop (period) is present:

Full citations can be created manually or by templates:


 * templates
 * citation

All of these templates have the same parameters and basic functionality. This page describes all of them except the parameters of sfnm and harvs; please see their documentation pages. Editors editing one of these templates are requested to make parallel changes to the other versions.

Harvard citation: harv
Template harv creates a parenthetical reference with a link to the full citation in the references section at the bottom of the article.

{{Markup
 * Article text {{harv|Smith|2006|p=25}}.

Shortened footnote: sfn or harvnb
Template harvnb inside a span can be used to create a  that is linked to the full citation at the bottom of the article. Template sfn (without the use of ) has the same effect and it also combines identical footnotes automatically.

{{markup| Article text.{{sfn|Smith|2007|p=25}} More article text.{{sfn|Smith|2007|p=25}} Still more article text.{{sfn|Smith|2007|p=26}}

In text attribution: harvtxt
Template harvtxt can be used to link an in-text attribution to the full citation at the bottom of the page. {{markup
 * According to {{harvtxt|Smith|2009|p=25}} ...

Bundled citation: harvnb or sfnm
Template harvnb can be used to bundle citations. sfnm also produces bundled citations.

{{markup| Article text ({{harvnb|Smith|2010|p=25}}; {{harvnb|Jones|2010}}). | Article text ({{harvnb|Smith|2010|p=25}}; {{harvnb|Jones|2010}}). Article text. {{Fake heading|sub=3|Notes}} parameters link name.
 * Article text.

{{markup| The theory was developed by {{harvs|txt|first=F. J.|last=Murray|author1-link=F. J. Murray|first2=J.|last2=von Neumann|author2-link=John von Neumann|year=1936|year2=1937|year3=1943}}. | The theory was developed by {{harvs|txt|first=F. J.|last=Murray|author1-link=F. J. Murray|first2=J.|last2=von Neumann|author2-link=John von Neumann|year=1936|year2=1937|year3=1943}}. The theory was developed by F. J. Murray and J. von Neumann (Murray|von Neumann|1936}}|1936,Murray|von Neumann|1937}}|1937,Murray|von Neumann|1943}}|1943). | The theory was developed by F. J. Murray and J. von Neumann (Murray|von Neumann|1936}}|1936, Murray|von Neumann|1937}}|1937, Murray|von Neumann|1943}}|1943).

Using colon format: harvcol, harvcolnb, harvcoltxt
Templates harvcol, harvcolnb, harvcoltxt use a colon to indicate the page number(s) or location.

Parenthesis around the year: sfnp and harvp
Template sfnp puts parenthesis around the year. Compare the two examples.

{{markup Article text.{{sfnp|Smith|2011}}

Additional comments or quotes: ps
Parameter ps can be used to add quotes or additional comments. Note that this effect can also be achieved using harvnb, if done as shown in the last example. The postscript is only effective the first time sfn is used for a particular author, year and location.

{{markup Some information.{{sfn|Smith|2011|p=2|ps=: "A quote verifying the information."}}

No closing period: none
Using none in sfn removes the final period. Compare the two examples. Suppressing the default period (full stop) ensures consistency with Citation style 2, as produced by Citation, which does not use a trailing period (full stop) in notes. The postscript is only effective the first time sfn is used for a particular author, year and location. ps will also suppress terminal punctuation. Follow-on editors who encounter 'empty' parameters can't know if a previous editor intended to leave that parameter blank. Using the keyword none is a positive indication of the previous editor's intent.

{{markup Article text.{{sfn|Smith|2011|ps=none}}

Adding a URL for the page or location
If a specific link to the page or section is available, a URL can be added to the location or page number. {{markup
 * {{harv|Smith|2011|loc=chpt 3}}
 * {{harv|Smith|2011|loc=chpt 3}}
 * {{harv|Smith|2011|loc=&amp;sect;7}}
 * {{harv|Smith|2011|loc=§7}}
 * Article text.{{sfn|Smith|2011|p=3}}

Wikilink to citation does not work
If an article is using this template, and nothing happens when you click on the highlighted wikilink from a Harvard style citation to a full citation at the bottom of the page, there are several possible solutions. If:
 * 1) The correct citation does not appear at the bottom of the article. Solution: Find the source (it may be copied from an article on a similar subject), and check that it verifies the text. If the source can't be found, tag the citation with citation not found.
 * 2) The correct citation appears at the bottom of the article, and
 * 3) The Harvard citation uses a template (such as sfn or harv):
 * 4) The citation uses a template from the list at Citation Style 1:
 * 5) The name is spelled or capitalized differently here than the citation. Solution: check the source for the correct spelling.
 * 6) The year is different here than the citation. Solution: check the source for the correct year.
 * 7) The citation template requires harv (not needed for citation, but is needed for most other Citation Style 1 templates). Solution: Add harv.
 * 8) The template has a date field and no year field, but the format of the date field is unusual. Solution: Try to fix the date. If the link still does not work, add year to the citation template. (It's okay if it has both.)
 * 9) The citation does not have an author's last name. Solution: check that args is set correctly (see below).
 * 10) The citation uses a Citation Style Vancouver template. Solution: check that harvid is set correctly (see below).
 * 11) The citation uses a template that does not support ref (See Citation templates and reference anchors). Solution: An anchor can be created using.
 * 12) The citation does not use a template:
 * 13) It has no wikicode to create an anchor. Solution: If  citation templates are used liberally throughout the article, then reformat the citation with the appropriate  template and set the ref appropriately. Otherwise consult with local editors on the talk page about how to proceed. Either add  templates and harv templates, or remove all templates, depending on what local editors prefer. A few articles use wikicite to create an anchor as an alternative to standard templates.
 * 14) Uses a  span to create an anchor. Solution: remove the cite span (these are deprecated) and proceed as with the previous.
 * 15) Uses wikicite. Solution: Check that args matches.
 * 16) If the Harvard citation uses a handwritten wikilink, such as
 * 17) The citation uses a citation template which supports ref (See Citation templates and reference anchors). Solution: Check that ref is set to a matching id.
 * 18) Otherwise, check that the reference has   with a matching id.

Templates that have broken wikilinks using these templates are added to the category.

More than one work in a year
Where there is a need to cite more than one work by the same author published in the same year, the standard way to disambiguate such works is to add a letter suffix after the year element of the template (e.g.  and ).

Templates that use Module:Citation/CS1
When is used with  or  templates, a year-suffix letter may be added to date for all accepted date formats except year initial numeric (YYYY-MM-DD). It is not necessary to include both year and date. If both are included, year is used for the  anchor to be compliant with legacy citations.
 * 2013a – simple year only dates
 * Jan 2013b or Winter 2013b – month or season and year dates
 * 9 November 2013b or November 9, 2013b – full dates
 * June–July 2013c or Winter–Spring 2013c – month or season ranges and year dates
 * c. 2013d – circa year dates
 * –f or Summer –f – year ranges
 * n.d.e – no date (n.d.)
 * 2013x-11-09 – not supported, the template must use 2013x

{{markup More text.{{sfn|Smith|1993b|p=32}}
 * Article text.{{sfn|Smith|1993a|p=25}}

More than one author with the same last name
The above solution to add a letter suffix after the year element also works for multiple authors with the same last name. For example, both Richard Bushman and Claudia Lauper Bushman published books in 2006. To differentiate between the two books, the first one is given the year "2006a" and the second one "2006b".

Large numbers of authors
Only the first four authors are required by the template. Listing more is not supported. It is also possible to use the harvid in the citation template, which allows a more concise citation in the article text.

{{markup {{harv|Smith|Jones|Brown|Black|1994|p=25}}.
 * Article text

No author name in citation template
Some sources do not have a single author with a last name, such as a magazine article or a report from a government institution. There is no consensus (in Wikipedia or among citation styles) about how to format author-date citations to works that do not have a specific author. Several choices are: An article should adopt one of these styles consistently. Using harvid in the citation template can handle these cases.
 * 1) For a newspaper or periodical you may use the name of the paper and the date.
 * 2) For a publication by an institution, use either:
 * 3) The initials of the institution
 * 4) The name of the institution
 * 5) Alternatively, some style guides recommend using the title of the article.
 * 6) Other style guides recommend using "Anonymous" or "Anon."

{{markup
 * Article text.{{sfn |BGI|1996|p=429}}

Citation has date and no year
Either the year or date of a citation template can be matched – the template logic can extract the year from a full date. If the date parameter is not a full date, then the extraction will fail. If the link does not seem to work, it also possible to set both date and year parameters. The template will display the date and use the year for the anchor. If only the year is known the year field must be used in the citation for the link to work correctly (i.e. 2005 may not work correctly). These two examples show a year being successfully extracted from full date.

{{markup
 * Article text.{{sfn|Smith|1997|p=101}}

Citation template does not support harv
The family of templates use parameter harvid to create an anchor for the Harvard citation templates. This must be set to a concatenation of the parameters passed to the Harvard citation template.

{{markup
 * Article text.{{sfn|Smith|1999|p=101}}

Citation format does not support anchors: wikicite
In a few very rare cases, it may be impossible for the citation templates to create an anchor. Either (1) the citation is formatted with a template that does not support the ref parameter or (2) the source can't be described using our citation templates at all. In these cases, it is possible to use wikicite to make the anchor. (As of November 2010, there are only approximately 100 articles that require this technique.) It is also possible that (3) local editors would prefer not to use citation templates. In this case, it is important to discuss what the local editors would like to do about the bad links. It is always possible to simply remove harv or sfn.

{{markup
 * Article text.{{sfn |Big Government Agency|1999}}

Citation has multiple authors and no date
The templates assume that the last field is the year. Where there are multiple authors and no year the template will form a correct link but will display the last author as if it were a year. To force the displayed text to show all authors as name, the following work around may be used: {{markup
 * Article text.

Recommended style
The recommended Harvard referencing style potentially uses all four templates. Each automatically generates a hypertext link based on the name(s) and date. Here is an example {{markup
 * Some works on gravitation are so massive they warp spacetime themselves {{Harv|Misner|Thorne|Wheeler|1973}}; yet {{Harvtxt|Einstein|1915}} presented essential equations with notable brevity. The essential ingredients are the curvature tensor and the stress-energy tensor ({{Harvnb|Einstein|1915|p=844}}; {{Harvnb|Misner|Thorne|Wheeler|1973|p=41}}).

Implementation notes
These templates use two elements: a wikilink in the body of the article, and an anchor in the reference section of the article. Clicking on the wikilink repositions the page at the anchor.

Citation template anchor
The most common citation templates are or. If harv is set, then Module:Citation/CS1 and Citation/core create an anchor followed by the concatenation of the following parameters: Template Citation sets harv as the default.
 * last or last1 or surname or surname1 or author or author1 or authors,
 * last2 or surname2 or author2,
 * last3 or surname3 or author3,
 * last4 or surname4 or author4,
 * editor-last or editor-surname or editor1-last or editor1-surname or editor or editors,
 * editor2-last or editor2-surname,
 * editor3-last or editor3-surname,
 * editor4-last or editor4-surname,
 * year.

This covers the most common templates. Information about all the templates is available at Citation templates and reference anchors.

Please note that the above list does not include the deprecated coauthor parameter, which is ignored in generating the citation's CITEREF anchor. It is recommended that, when used with the harv family templates, citation templates always use the numbered last parameters instead of coauthor so that a more accurate CITEREF anchor may be generated. If coauthor is used, it will not be possible to generate a Harvard citation that displays the authors' names correctly and that generates a link to the correct CITEREF anchor.

Use of the date parameter in place of the year parameter in citation templates is preferred when full dates are known.

Harvard citation wikilink
The Harvard citation templates create a wikilink to the anchor. For example produces the link #CITEREFSmith2006 and  produces the anchor CITEREFSmith2006.

Using CITEREF directly
A few articles create a custom ID using CITEREF, either in place of the Harvard citation template (e.g. ) or as a value for ref in the citation template.

Examples: Where cite_name is a name such as the publisher.

sfn's ref name
Template sfn creates a named footnote, so that identical footnotes are combined automatically. The footnote name begins with FOOTNOTE followed by a concatenation of the arguments to sfn. E.g.: this template call should have exactly the same functionality as Smith which, in turn, has the same functionality as Smith (2006), p. 26.

The call to harvnb has been subst'ed for quicker load times.