Professional writing of an academic nature requires appropriate writing that can be able to substantiate the content of the work presented within the academic literary piece. This is appropriately done through the use of academic referencing styles that give citations and reference lists in form of a bibliography that details all the relevant sources used in the writing. The in-text citations direct the readership specifically to the reference type and particular page or year of publication of the work. On the other hand, the reference list, alternatively known as the bibliography or works cited page outlines the full details of the references given within the text through in-text citations. This list details the authors, directors or producers of the work depending on whether the work under analysis is a text document, movie or piece of music.
Referencing is important for two reasons: firstly, it enables the readership to trace your sources of material used in writing the work, and secondly; it prevents occurrences of plagiarism due to technicalities associated with the failure to appreciate other people’s work. These citations and references help the writer in avoiding cases of using other people’s work and passing it as one’s own. There are numerous academic writing styles structured for different kinds study groups differentiated in terms of profession. These include Harvard writing style used in documenting, Chicago writing style, American Psychological Association (APA) writing style and the Modern Language Association (MLA) writing style-just to mention but a few. However, of importance to this paper is the Harvard style of writing used in documenting.
Harvard style papers are unique by virtue of their citation styles, like APA the Harvard style papers use the author-date in-text citation style. Harvard style papers may also include page numbers, especially; when the appreciation of other people’s work is done in form of a direct quotation. Direct quotation is indeed the easiest way to appreciate other people’s contribution to your papers. The second method is paraphrasing, this involves writing the sourced information within your Harvard style papers in your won words, and thereafter making a citation at the end of the work or at the beginning through an introductory phrase such as: “According to Johnston, (1878) there was a lot of…..”. The alternative to this would be: “In 1878 there was a lot of.... (Johnston, 1878)” Specific page inclusions in citations are important when the work cited is lengthy or when directly quoting within papers. The letter “p” is used to indicate a single page (p. 23), whereas; a double “pp” within papers indicates citations from a number of pages which are more than one in number (pp. 23-67). Harvard style papers should also have a reference list titled “references”, and these should be arranged in an alphabetical order. The inclusion of details in papers depends on the source type, however; the common format is usually as follows: producer/author or director, date of production or publication, title, title of major work if any, publisher, website or production house.
Author/s names within Harvard style papers should use last name and initials for the other names, and these should have no punctuations in between. Harvard style papers should use italics for titles of works such as journal articles, books and newspapers, and journals’ and books’ titles in Harvard style papers should be enclosed in single quotation marks. Entries of works by single authors in the Harvard style papers’ reference list should come first. In Harvard style papers having several references used from one author, they should be differentiated by alphabetical letters (a, b, c...) and ordered alphabetically as per their titles. Generally, these are the basic features of Harvard style papers. If you are interested in knowing more intricate material about Harvard style papers please visit our online writing service site and learn more from out tutorials and also find out how you can order papers.

Author's Bio: 

Author is associated with MeldaResearch.com which is a global Custom Essay Writing and Term Paper Writing Company. If you would like help in Research Papers and Term Paper Help you can visit Harvard Style Papers