APA and Harvard look almost identical at a glance, which is exactly why students lose marks switching between them. Both are author-date systems, but they differ in punctuation, capitalisation, ordering and consistency of rules. This guide shows the differences with side-by-side examples.
The fundamental difference
APA is a single, centrally-governed style published by the American Psychological Association, currently in its 7th edition. There is one authoritative manual, and rules are fixed.
Harvard is not a single style at all. It is a family of author-date conventions, and each university, and sometimes each department, publishes its own variant. This is why two Harvard guides can contradict each other and both be correct.
In-text citations compared
| Situation | APA 7 | Harvard (typical) |
|---|---|---|
| Single author | (Sharma, 2021) | (Sharma 2021) |
| With page number | (Sharma, 2021, p. 45) | (Sharma 2021, p. 45) |
| Two authors | (Sharma & Patel, 2021) | (Sharma and Patel 2021) |
| Three or more | (Sharma et al., 2021) | (Sharma et al. 2021) |
| Narrative style | Sharma (2021) argues… | Sharma (2021) argues… |
The recurring differences are the comma before the year (APA uses it, most Harvard variants do not) and the ampersand versus “and”.
Reference list differences
Journal article
- APA 7: Sharma, R., & Patel, A. (2021). Learning outcomes in blended environments. Journal of Education Research, 45(2), 112-130. https://doi.org/10.xxxx
- Harvard: Sharma, R. and Patel, A. (2021) “Learning outcomes in blended environments”, Journal of Education Research, 45(2), pp. 112-130.
Book
- APA 7: Kumar, S. (2020). Research methods for social science. Academic Press.
- Harvard: Kumar, S. (2020) Research methods for social science. London: Academic Press.
Note that Harvard commonly retains the place of publication and puts article titles in quotation marks, while APA 7 dropped the publisher location entirely.
Capitalisation: the mistake almost everyone makes
APA uses sentence case for article and book titles: only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns are capitalised. Journal names, however, use title case and italics.
Many Harvard variants use sentence case too, but some use title case. This inconsistency is why copying a citation from Google Scholar rarely matches your required style exactly.
Which style does your course use?
| Style | Typically used in |
|---|---|
| APA 7 | Psychology, education, nursing, health sciences, business (US) |
| Harvard | Business, social sciences, humanities (UK, Australia, India) |
| MLA | Literature, languages, humanities |
| Vancouver | Medicine, clinical health sciences |
| IEEE | Engineering, computer science |
| OSCOLA / AGLC4 | Law (UK / Australia) |
Check your module handbook first. If it names a specific edition, such as APA 7 or AGLC4, use that edition precisely.
Avoiding the most common referencing deductions
- Mismatched lists: every in-text citation must appear in the reference list, and vice versa
- Mixing styles within one document, usually from copying citations from different sources
- Missing page numbers on direct quotations
- Incorrect alphabetical ordering in the reference list
- Inconsistent use of italics for journal and book titles
- Trusting reference generators without checking the output
- APA is one fixed style; Harvard is a family of institution-specific variants
- Your university guide always overrides any general Harvard guide
- APA uses a comma before the year and an ampersand; most Harvard variants do not
- APA 7 removed publisher location; Harvard usually keeps it
- Consistency across the whole document matters more than any single rule
Frequently Asked Questions
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