New Hart's Rules update not showing date accessed in footnotes.

geoffarsenal · 2026-01-05T03:16:46+00:00

I've been using the New Hart's Rules on my documents. I can see there's just been a new update, and it no longer appears to be showing the access date when I cite things like documents or reports.

Can anyone please provide any help to fix this. Is there a particular New Hart's style I need to be using to ensure this information is displayed correctly.

dunning · 2026-01-05T05:25:24+00:00

You're right that New Hart's Rules always shows access dates with a URL, unless it is a DOI. I have proposed a correction to the styles here:

https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/pull/7971

geoffarsenal · 2026-01-05T05:55:56+00:00

Thanks for your help with this. Can you clarify the New Hart's Rules style name that I'll need to use to display the access date once this has been corrected?

dunning · 2026-01-05T06:24:39+00:00

This change will be reflected in all the styles. You can see the files affected here:

https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/pull/7971/changes

geoffarsenal · 2026-01-05T07:08:58+00:00

Great! When will the revised styles be available? I just tried to generate a few test citations using New Hart's (notes) and they are still not showing the date accessed in brackets (like before the update).

Do I need to do something else?

dunning · 2026-01-05T07:27:21+00:00

The access dates should not be in brackets; that was accidentally taken over from MHRA. See NHR 18.8.5 for the correct formatting.

The styles need to be reviewed by volunteers, so it could be anything from a day to a month before the update is published; but since term hasn’t started yet I hope it will be on the sooner end.

bwiernik · 2026-01-05T14:56:03+00:00

Change is merged

geoffarsenal · 2026-01-06T03:16:23+00:00

Thank you for actioning this so quickly. Looks to be working well now!