Citing a book

Author’s surname, and initial(s) Title in italics – underlining = italics – exactly what is on the title page

Ahmad, B. (1990) Black Perspectives in Social Work, Birmingham: Venture.

Date of publication (in brackets) –

Place of publication, colon, publisher
usually from title page or title verso

Author’s surname, and initial(s)

Citing an article
Date of publication (in brackets) – usually from title page of journal
Neale, J. (1999) Understanding drug-using clients’ views of substitute prescribing British Journal of Social Work 29(1),
127-45.
Title in roman (ie not italics) in quotation marks –
exactly what is on the first page of the article

Title of journal (in italics) – exactly what is on the title page of journal

Volume number (part number), comma, page numbers – look at the title page of the
journal for volume and part numbers and check the actual page numbers because it is
sometimes wrong on the cover or index page.

Citations – how to do it
This is a simplified Harvard format citation, which is common for social science publications, and it contains the conventional information.
If you look at the contributors’ instructions in any journal, you can see how that particular journal implements the style, in its particular case;
when submitting an article for a journal, authors ideally should follow the journal’s style exactly, eg typeface, commas, full stops.

© Malcolm Payne 2001 from a lecture on academic writing to the MA Youth and Community Work Manchester Metropolitan University