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MLA to Harvard converter

Paste MLA references, get Harvard. Free, no sign-up.

Paste references written in MLA and get them back in Harvard, ready to copy into Word or Google Docs. The main changes: author–page in-text citations become author–date citations, your “Works Cited” list becomes “Reference list” and titles switch to sentence case. CiteSwap looks each reference up in the open Crossref catalogue, so authors, years and page numbers come from the publisher’s record rather than being rewritten by hand.

MLA vs Harvard: the same sources side by side

Each example below was formatted by CiteSwap’s engine, exactly as the converter outputs it.

Journal article

MLA

Suri, Tavneet, and William Jack. “The Long-Run Poverty and Gender Impacts of Mobile Money.” Science, vol. 354, no. 6317, Dec. 2016, pp. 1288–92, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah5309.

In-text: (Suri and Jack 1290)

Harvard

Suri, T. and Jack, W. (2016) ‘The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money’, Science, 354(6317), pp. 1288–1292. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah5309.

In-text: (Suri and Jack, 2016, p. 1290)

Book

MLA

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Heinemann, 1958.

In-text: (Achebe 1290)

Harvard

Achebe, C. (1958) Things fall apart. London: Heinemann.

In-text: (Achebe, 1958, p. 1290)

Web page

MLA

World Health Organization. Malaria. 4 Dec. 2023, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria.

In-text: (World Health Organization 1290)

Harvard

World Health Organization (2023) Malaria. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria (Accessed: 1 October 2026).

In-text: (World Health Organization, 2023, p. 1290)

Key differences between MLA and Harvard

11 of 12 rules differ; they are listed first.

RuleMLAHarvard
Reference list headingWorks CitedReference list
In-text citationsauthor and page number in parentheses with no comma, e.g. (Suri and Jack 1290)author and year in parentheses, e.g. (Suri and Jack, 2016)
Author namesFirst author inverted with full names, the second in normal order, e.g. Suri, Tavneet, and William JackSurname and initials, joined with “and”, e.g. Suri, T. and Jack, W.
Many authorsThree or more authors: first author followed by “et al.”Four or more authors: first author followed by “et al.”
DateNear the end, after the journal or publisher detailsStraight after the authors, in parentheses, with no full stop: (2016)
Title capitalisationTitle caseSentence case
Article titlesIn quotation marks, title caseIn single quotation marks, sentence case
ItalicsContainers: journal, website and book titlesJournal names and book titles
Journal namesFull journal name in title case, followed by vol. and no.Full journal name in title case
Page rangesShortened range with “pp.”, e.g. pp. 1288–92Full page range with “pp.”, e.g. pp. 1288–1292
DOIs and linksDOI written as https://doi.org/… at the end; URLs without “https://” are also accepted“Available at:” before the DOI or URL, and “(Accessed: date)” for web pages
List order(same)Alphabetical by first author’s surnameAlphabetical by first author’s surname

When to use Harvard

Harvard is the most common referencing style at universities in the UK, Australia, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya. Cite Them Right is the version most of those universities follow. It is published by Cite Them Right (Bloomsbury); CiteSwap follows the Cite Them Right 12th edition.

MLA is more common in literature, languages, cultural studies, while Harvard is usual in business, economics, the social sciences. If your department or journal names a style, always follow it.

MLA to Harvard: frequently asked questions

How do I convert MLA citations to Harvard?

Paste your MLA reference list into the box above (one reference per line, numbered, or separated by blank lines), check that “From” says MLA or Auto-detect and “To” says Harvard, then press Convert. You can also paste DOIs, BibTeX or RIS. Copy the result or download it for Word.

How do in-text citations change from MLA to Harvard?

MLA uses author and page number in parentheses with no comma, e.g. (Suri and Jack 1290). Harvard uses author and year in parentheses, e.g. (Suri and Jack, 2016). For the same article and page: MLA gives (Suri and Jack 1290), Harvard gives (Suri and Jack, 2016, p. 1290).

What is the reference list called in Harvard?

In MLA the list is headed “Works Cited”; in Harvard it is “Reference list”. Change the heading when you paste the converted list into your document.

Do titles need different capitalisation in Harvard?

Yes. Harvard uses sentence case, capitalising only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns. CiteSwap keeps titles as the publisher’s record has them, so check that capitals on ordinary words are lowered, because catalogues often store titles in title case.

How are author names written in Harvard?

Harvard: Surname and initials, joined with “and”, e.g. Suri, T. and Jack, W. MLA: First author inverted with full names, the second in normal order, e.g. Suri, Tavneet, and William Jack. When a reference is matched in Crossref, CiteSwap uses full first names from the publisher’s record, so it can produce either form.

Is the MLA to Harvard converter accurate?

Each reference is matched against the Crossref catalogue (over 150 million records) and only accepted automatically when the title, year and first author agree. Anything uncertain is marked “Needs review” so you can pick the right match, and references that aren’t in the catalogue, like websites or local journals, are parsed from your text and marked so you can check them.