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How to reference a Wikipedia article in Harvard style

Daniel Elias
Answered on July 16, 2018 by

There are two ways to reference a Wikipedia article in Harvard style.

The easiest way is to use our reference generator below. Simply select the style you need to format your reference in, then paste the URL for the Wikipedia article into the search box and press search. We’ll find the details automatically and format them in the style you selected.

The manual way to reference a Wikipedia article in Harvard style

Alternatively you can reference it manually. A Wikipedia article is essentially just a webpage, so you should reference it in the same way you would usually reference a webpage. For Harvard style this is as follows:

First, locate these details for the article: article title, published date, access date, article URL (web address). The article title can be found at the top of the article, and the publish date can be found right at the bottom and looks something like This page was last edited on 16 July 2018, at 05:07 (UTC). The access date is the date you took information from the article (usually today).

Then use this template, replacing the coloured placeholders with the information you found on the page:

Wikipedia Contributors (published date year). Article title. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: article URL [Accessed accessed date day, month, year].

The final formatted reference should look like this:

Wikipedia Contributors (2018). Thanos. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanos [Accessed 16 Jul. 2018].
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