Talk:Author date system

This article formerly had a name ("Harvard referencing") that is now used only in a relatively small part of the relevant world. So I changed the name to "Author-date System", a term that is (a) used worldwide, (b) used overwhelmingly more than "Harvard referencing" by recognized style authorities, and (c) used much more frequently on respected web resources such as google.com.

Below is some of the evidence that "Author-date System" is a much better name for the article than "Harvard referencing".

The name "Harvard referencing" seems to be used mostly in the UK or former Commonwealth countries. Let's examine the terminology that is used by a leading UK style manual. The index of the Oxford Style Manual does not have an entry for "Harvard referencing". The text of the Oxford Manual uses the term author-date. The text of the relevant section does not mention "Harvard referencing".

The same goes for the printed version of the Chicago Manual of Style. The index of the Chicago Manual, which is 76 pages long, has no entry for “Harvard referencing”. The text of the Chicago Manual uses the term author-date. The text of the relevant section does not mention "Harvard referencing".

Let's examine the terminology used by our primary reference.

The primary reference in the article we are discussing is The Chicago Manual of Style. This reference was chosen as the primary reference because so many other citation authorities refer to Chicago as the ultimate authority concerning the citation system we are discussing. There is an online version of Chicago – The Chicago Manual of Style Online.

What does The Chicago Manual of Style Online have to say about "Harvard referencing"?

I cite the index of The Chicago Manual of Style Online as not mentioning the term "Harvard referencing".

I cite the table of contents of The Chicago Manual of Style Online as never once mentioning "Harvard referencing".

Let’s look at other published authorities. I cite the University of Toronto’s citation guide, http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/document.html, as always using the term “author-date” and never once mentioning "Harvard referencing".

I cite the University of Maryland’s "Citation Systems and Style Manuals", http://www.lib.umd.edu/guides/style_manuals.html, as always using the term “author-date” and never once mentioning "Harvard referencing".

The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing is a joint project of MIT and Microsoft Corporation. Mayfield’s online citation guide includes comprehensive guides to five citation formats:

American Psychological Association (APA) Author-Date Style

Modern Language Association (MLA) Author-Page Style

Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) Note Citations

Council of Biology Editors (CBE) Citation-Sequence System

IEEE Citation-Sequence System

I cite ethe index of The Mayfield Handbook as never once mentioning “Harvard referencing”.

I cite the table of contents of The Mayfield Handbook as never once mentioning “Harvard referencing”.

Let’s look at printed authorities:

I cite the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: the index has no entry for “Harvard referencing”.

I cite Turabian’s A Manual for Writers: the index has no entry for “Harvard referencing”.

I cite the MLA Handbook: the index has no entry for “Harvard referencing”.

I cite the MLA Style Manual: the index has no entry for “Harvard referencing”.

I cite John Bruce Howell’s Style Manuals of the English-Speaking World: A Guide: the index has no entry for “Harvard referencing”.

I cite Webster’s Standard American Style Manual: the index has no entry for “Harvard referencing”.

What about Harvard University itself? That’s where author-date was developed, in the 1950s and 1960s. Surely if any institution outside the Commonwealth uses the term “Harvard Referencing”, it would be Harvard University.

Therefore I cite a document published by google.com:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22harvard+referencing%22+%22harvard+university%22+site%3Aharvard.edu&btnG=Search

This document states:

Your search - "harvard referencing" "harvard university" site:harvard.edu - did not match any documents.

This evidence demonstrates that even Harvard University doesn't call the author-date system “Harvard referencing”.

Perhaps it was too restrictive to include the phrase “Harvard University” in the last citation. Let’s look for any mention of “Harvard referencing” that comes from Harvard University, even if it doesn’t mention “Harvard University”.

Therefore I cite the document

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22harvard+referencing%22+site%3Aharvard.edu&btnG=Search

The document states that there is one web page at Harvard University that mentions “Harvard referencing”. But if we follow the citation, we see that it leads to this document:

http://lists.hmdc.harvard.edu/lists/apsa_itp/2006_03/pdfEFQQA6DOCI.pdf

and if we examine that document, we see that the author uses the word "organisational" and the phrase "14 June 2006". Those UK-style usages demonstrate that this document was created by a Commonwealther. (The document is an announcement of an international symposium organized by the Commonwealther under the auspices of Harvard University.)

Even Newcastle Law School at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, http://www.ncl.ac.uk/nuls/lectures/legwrit/app2.htm, refers to the system primarily as author-date and secondarily as Harvard: "The author date system (also known as the Harvard system) is widely used in social sciences". In general, we can find Commonwealth countries that use the term "author-date", but we can't find non-Commonwealth countries that use the term "Harvard referencing".

In Canada, the Univerity of Calgary Press calls the system "author-date": "All books in the natural sciences and most in the social sciences should use the author-date system of citation" (http://www.uofcpress.com/InfoAuthors/Prep10.html).

The University of Calgary's Information Resources departmennt, in "Citing Electronic and Print Resources", at http://library.ucalgary.ca/subjectpages/business/subjectguides/citingelectronicandprintresources.php, uses the term "author-date" and does not mention "Harvard".

Other evidence comes from a document published by a highly reputed authority, google.com:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22author+date%22+citation+reference&btnG=Google+Search

This document states:

"Results ... about 125,000"

As the second piece of evidence I cite another document published by the same authority:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22harvard+referencing%22+OR+%22harvard+reference%22+citation+reference&btnG=Google+Search

This document states:

"Results ... about 17,000"

These two published documents together demonstrate that over seven times as many web pages worldwide, in the context of citations and references, use the term “author-date” than use either “Harvard referencing” or “Harvard reference”.

I think it is reasonable to assume that, unless anyone can produce evidence to the contrary, use by persons is roughly proportional to use by web pages.

Additional evidence comes from another web page published by google.com:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22harvard+referencing%22+%22harvard+university%22&btnG=Search

This published authority shows (on the first page and subsequent pages of the document) that almost every web page that uses the term is a web page in the Commonwealth.

Interestingly, the first non-Commonwealth web page that appears in the document is http://www.wku.edu/Library/dlps/guides/stylwrit.htm. This page, from Western Kentucky University, does mention “Harvard” – just once. Aside from that one mention of “Harvard”, the document uses the term “author-date” exclusively. And the sole mention of “Harvard” is a reference to the University of Western Australia (it is a pointer to UWA’s citation guidelines). This document provides further demonstration that the term “Harvard referencing” is used very rarely outside Commonwealth Countries, excluding Canada.

I did not cherry-pick the citations above. On the contrary, every citation authority I investigated, online or printed, confirmed the evidence discussed above. I did not find and discard authorities who failed to confirm the idea that the term “Harvard referencing” is regional. This means that I could, probably with ease, produce additional authorities (even in the Commonwealth countries less Canada) that use the term “author-date” and do not use the term “Harvard referencing”. I have not done so because, at this time, I think it’s enough for me to cite the Oxford Style Manual, The Chicago Manual of Style, The University of Toronto, The University of Maryland, the MIT-Microsoft Mayfield Handbook, the APA Manual, Turabian, the MLA Handbook, the MLA Style Manual, Howell, Webster’s, and google.com.

There is no need to break any links – we preserve the value of links by redirecting the regional term “Harvard referencing” to the worldwide term “author-date”. There is no need to ban the term “Harvard referencing” – we can support the term by redirection, and we can define it properly as a regional synonym for “author-date”.

TH 04:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)