Harvard referencing
How to cite a chapter in an edited book in Harvard referencing
A chapter has two sets of names — the chapter authors and the book editors — and getting the two the wrong way round is the single most common reference-list error.
THE FORMAT
A chapter in an edited book in Harvard, at a glance
Author, A. (Year) ‘Title of chapter’, in B. Editor (ed.) Title of book. Place: Publisher, pp. 00–00.
Nwosu, C. (2020) ‘Translating silence: fieldwork ethics in postwar Bosnia’, in H. Brandt and I. Kraus (eds) The ethnographer’s dilemma. Manchester: Fell and Wallis, pp. 143–167.
(Nwosu, 2020, p. 151)
In prose: Nwosu (2020, p. 151) treats the interpreter’s pauses as data rather than noise.
Nwosu, C. (2020) ‘Translating silence: fieldwork ethics in postwar Bosnia’, in H. Brandt (ed.) The ethnographer’s dilemma. Manchester: Fell and Wallis, pp. 143–167.
In text: (Nwosu, 2020, pp. 145–146)
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the reference list builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What Harvard needs from a chapter in an edited book
Elements to collect
- Chapter author or authors
- Year of publication
- Chapter title
- Editor or editors of the whole book
- Book title
- Page range of the chapter
- Publisher
Rules specific to this entry
- The chapter author is inverted — Nwosu, C. — but the editors are not: their initials come first, as in “H. Brandt and I. Kraus.” Reversing this is the most common error on this source type.
- Use “(ed.)” for one editor and “(eds)” for more than one. UK guides usually drop the period after “eds”; US-influenced guides write “(eds.)”.
- The in-text citation names the chapter author and never the editors, even though the editors’ names are the ones printed on the cover.
- The chapter’s page range closes the entry, after the publisher. Do not repeat it in the in-text citation, which should point at the specific page you used.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Harvard needs for a chapter in an edited book: Chapter author or authors; Year of publication; Chapter title; Editor or editors of the whole book.
Build the reference list entry
Arrange those details in the Harvard order: Author, A. (Year) ‘Title of chapter’, in B. Editor (ed.) Title of book. Place: Publisher, pp. 00–00.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as (Nwosu, 2020, p. 151) — or work the same reference into your sentence as Nwosu (2020, p. 151) treats the interpreter’s pauses as data rather than noise..
Check it against the exceptions
The chapter author is inverted — Nwosu, C. — but the editors are not: their initials come first, as in “H. Brandt and I. Kraus.” Reversing this is the most common error on this source type.
Harvard RULES
The conventions behind every Harvard entry
your institution’s Harvard style guide — Harvard has no single governing manual is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the reference list is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the reference list is sorted, and where Harvard entries most often go wrong — are collected on the Harvard referencing guide.
The same chapter in an edited book in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Harvard and book chapters
What if the chapter in an edited book has no author?
Move the title into the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word of that title — ignoring an initial “A”, “An” or “The”. In the text, use a shortened form of the title where the author name would go.
What do I need before I can cite a chapter in an edited book?
Chapter author or authors, Year of publication, Chapter title, and the rest of the elements listed above. A chapter has two sets of names — the chapter authors and the book editors — and getting the two the wrong way round is the single most common reference-list error.
Is there anything unusual about a chapter in an edited book in Harvard?
The chapter author is inverted — Nwosu, C. — but the editors are not: their initials come first, as in “H. Brandt and I. Kraus.” Reversing this is the most common error on this source type.
What else catches people out here?
Use “(ed.)” for one editor and “(eds)” for more than one. UK guides usually drop the period after “eds”; US-influenced guides write “(eds.)”.
Can I reformat this chapter in an edited book in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
