Harvard vs APA: What Differs and Which Style Your Paper Needs

Harvard and APA referencing belong to the same family. Both are author-date systems: the author's surname and the year appear in the sentence, and a reference list at the end holds the full details. APA's page on the author-date system describes the two forms with the author and year in parentheses, as in (Luna, 2020), or the author named in the sentence, as in Luna (2020).

APA is one manual

APA Style is defined by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, now in its 7th edition. APA's about page says the style covers psychology, nursing, business, communications, engineering and related fields. Because one manual rules, an APA 7 reference looks the same at any school.

Harvard has no single official manual

Harvard is a family of similar styles instead. Our generator follows Cite Them Right (12th edition), the guide that Newcastle, the Open University and UWE Bristol teach. Queen Margaret University's library page says that most of its subjects ask for Harvard, while psychology and a few other programs use APA 7th. It also notes that Cite Them Right has since published a 13th edition, which drops the place of publication for books, so check which edition your department follows.

Variants within Harvard

Deakin University's retired Australian Harvard guide put a colon between the year and the page, as in Wood (2002:64), and began et al. at three authors. UK guides use a comma and a "p." instead. So for Harvard vs APA, a school guide always wins on the Harvard side. Try the Harvard referencing generator for the Cite Them Right form, and the APA Citation Machine for APA.

The Harvard vs APA table lists eight differences that change what you type. Harvard rules come from the Newcastle University style sheet, the Open University quick guide and UWE Bristol's in-text page; APA rules come from apastyle.apa.org.

What the Harvard and APA referencing table means

Everything else is shared: the author-date logic, the alphabetical list, "p." before a single page, and the use of the DOI when one exists. If your instructor accepts either style, pick one and apply all eight rows. The difference between Harvard referencing and APA is small, so a half-converted list is the most common mistake.

Where the Harvard guides disagree

Harvard guides disagree with one another. Newcastle's sheet lists up to ten authors in the reference list, while the Open University says the list may name all authors or use et al. consistently. Newcastle, the Open University and UWE all start et al. at four authors in the text, but Deakin's Australian guide started at three. Treat the Harvard column as the Cite Them Right default.

The APA vs Harvard in-text citation rules look alike, which makes the small differences easy to miss. The sections below cover each one.

APA vs Harvard in-text citation: "and" or "&"

APA's author-date page says to use an ampersand between names inside parentheses, as in (Salas & D'Agostino, 2020), and to spell out "and" in a narrative citation, as in Salas and D'Agostino (2020). UWE Bristol and the Open University use "and" in both positions, and the Open University adds that "&" is not used.

Et al. thresholds

APA names both authors of a two-author work every time and uses the first author plus et al. for three or more, from the first citation, as in (Martin et al., 2020). Harvard guides at Newcastle, the Open University and UWE list up to three authors, as in (Wong, Smith and Adebole, 2015), and use et al. from four. See our guide to citing two authors in APA for the two-author case.

Commas and the year

In APA, a parenthetical citation has a comma before the year, (Luna, 2020), and a narrative citation has none. UWE's Harvard page follows the same pattern. Newcastle's sheet shows the page number inside the parentheses after the year, as in Evans (2015, p. 33).

Page numbers

APA uses "p." before a page number, as in "p. 470," and requires a citation with a page or other location for every direct quotation. Harvard guides use "p." for one page and "pp." for a range, such as (Toker et al., 2020, pp. 585–586). Our guide on how to cite a quote in APA covers quotations.

Several sources and secondary sources

UWE separates several sources with semicolons in chronological order. For secondary sources, UWE says to avoid them where possible and to list only the one you read. UWE also notes that Harvard does not use ibid.

The Harvard vs APA reference list is where most of the eight differences live. In both styles, entries are alphabetical by the first author's surname, and a work with a DOI gets the DOI.

Harvard vs APA reference list: date position

Both styles put the year in parentheses after the author. APA follows the parentheses with a full stop, as in Borrell, B. (2021). Harvard does not, as in Borrell, B. (2021) followed by the title. Harvard entries also end with a full stop after the DOI in our engine, while APA's DOI link gets none.

Harvard vs APA reference list: titles and italics

In Harvard, the Open University says article and chapter titles go in single quotation marks and book, journal and web page titles are italicized. APA does not use quotation marks around article titles, and italicizes the journal title and the volume number but not the article title or issue number. APA's journal page and its reference comparison guide both use sentence case for article and book titles, with title case for the journal name. The Cite Them Right examples we read use sentence case for books and articles as well, so capitalization is not a difference.

Harvard vs APA reference list: DOIs and dates

APA wants the DOI as a link in the form https://doi.org/xxxxx, with no "Retrieved from," and no full stop after it. Harvard entries end with "Available at:" followed by a DOI or URL; web pages add "(Accessed: date)." The APA webpage page says to include a retrieval date only when the page's content is designed to change over time and is not archived.

Listing authors

APA lists up to 20 authors. For 21 or more, it lists the first 19, an ellipsis and the last author. Harvard varies: Newcastle lists all authors and uses et al. only for more than ten, while the Open University allows either all names or et al. A school guide settles it.

The deepest Harvard vs APA gap is not in citations. APA is a whole paper format, while Harvard covers citation and the reference list only. So a Harvard paper takes its title page and layout from your school, and an APA paper takes them from the manual.

The APA 7 student title page

APA's title page guide lists these elements for a student paper: a bold, centered title three to four lines down, the author's name, the department and institution, the course number and name, the instructor, the due date, and a page number in the top right. Student papers omit the running head unless the instructor or institution asks for one. Our APA format guidelines cover margins, fonts and headings.

Harvard cover sheets

The Harvard guides we checked cover citations, not page layout. Many schools supply their own cover sheet, and some ask for a student number and word count. Our Harvard Title Page Generator builds such a page, and the APA title page generator builds the APA 7 version.

Block quotations in Harvard vs APA

For a quote of 40 words or more, APA drops the quotation marks, indents the block 0.5 in. and puts the citation after the final punctuation. The word threshold for Harvard can vary by school, which our Harvard referencing quotes guide covers.

The Harvard vs APA choice is almost never yours: use the one your instructor or program names. A syllabus that says "Harvard" in the UK probably means your school's Cite Them Right guide. One that says "APA" means the 7th edition unless it names another.

APA vs Harvard: when APA is the default

APA is the usual choice in psychology, nursing, business and the other fields on its about page. If you are a US student and the assignment doesn't name a style, ask. Queen Margaret University's page shows that even a Harvard-heavy UK school can require APA 7th for programs such as psychology.

Harvard vs APA: when Harvard is the default

Harvard is common in UK programs, and Queen Margaret University says most of its subjects ask for it. Check your library page for house rules on et al., the page-number format and the place of publication. For citing legislation or images in Harvard, see our guides on Harvard referencing legislation and Harvard referencing images.

One style per paper

If you move between systems, keep one style per paper. The Harvard referencing generator and our APA Citation Machine each produce one.

Most Harvard vs APA problems come from mixing the rules in one paper. Check yours against this list.

A final check

Match every in-text citation to a list entry, whichever style you use. Our student writing guides page links to every other style, and the free tools handle the formatting: the Harvard referencing generator for Cite Them Right and the APA Citation Machine for APA 7.