Writing tools
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If you are submitting assignments, essays or theses then you are required to correctly reference any ideas, images, data, reference lists you have used which are not your own. This also includes data and information you have obtained from electronic sources including the Internet.
Failure to give credit to the work of others can result in you being accused of plagiarism which if proven could result in no marks being given for your work or suspension from your course or even expulsion from your College or university.
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So you want to know how to cite a reference? Here you can use 50 Harvard reference wizards to generate a bibliography, "Works Cited", references or citations to books, speeches, images, legal rulings, websites and many other sources of information using the Harvard style, author-date citation method; the legal rulings are not referenced using the Harvard system but are included because many students need to cite at least one legal citation.
Over the past 10-15 years, there has been an enormous increase in the sources of information available to students; if you are an academic just look at your own thesis and determine how many different citations you used. If you graduated more than 10-years ago it is unlikely that you used more than 10-different reference types. The diversity of information sources that today's students encounter can create difficulties when it comes to correctly citing some sources, particular electronic sources, let alone judging the validity of the source. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that referencing causes so many problems across higher education wherever it is undertaken!
Following my experiences as a research supervisor, teacher, education manager and external examiner I decided that I would try to make referencing a little easier by creating a series of 'wizards'; these are forms in which information is entered, and if entered correctly, will result in a correctly formatted reference. Hopefully through this facility, supervisors may avoid the tautology of citations with ISBN numbers, incorrect Mintel citations and web references!
There are two Harvard style reference generators that you can use on this site; the Harvard Reference Generator which will provide a correctly formatted reference for 48-types of citation.You can either copy and paste the citation into a reference list or export to "Word". Alternatively you may use the Reference List Writer which will provide a list of references arranged in date and alphabetical order. The latter requires registration; this can be as simple as using any two words, numbers or combinations thereof. However if you want to retrieve your list at a future time and forget your details you are advised to use an Email address!
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There are a range of formulae that can be used to assess the readability of written text. While these all have limitations, judicious use of several ‘readability' predictors can improve the clarity of writing of articles, theses, reports and assignments.
The software used here, an online readability calculator, will return a number of indicators including the average words per sentence, Fog index, Flesch reading ease score, and Flesch-Kincaid grade level. These readability indicators may be of help in editing and developing your written work.
It is unclear how useful computer programmes are for analysing scientific writing since the language used tends to be complex. However, some studies have shown that the indicators derived using the software here do have value.
