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A template window then pops up, where you fill in as much information as possible about the source, and give a unique name for it in the "Ref name" field. Click the "Insert" button, which will add the required wikitext in the edit window. If you wish, you can also "Preview" how your reference will look first.
When editing, you'll see your reference next to the text; but after saving, readers will only see a reference number there; your reference should appear below. Good luck! If you get a warning about a missing "References" section at the end of the page, just add it:
When you are satisfied with the information in the citation form, clicking the Insert button will close the form and add the code for your citation to the edit window at the location you had selected prior to choosing a citation type. This information will show up as a superscript numbered link when you preview or save your edit.
The easiest way to start citing on Wikipedia is to see a basic example. The example here will show you how to cite a newspaper article using the {} template (see Citation quick reference for other types of citations). Copy and paste the following immediately after what you want to reference:
The animated image shows how VisualEditor can fill in a citation template automatically, which formats your references for you. You can also insert a plain-text citation using the "Basic" option in the manual tab. The "Cite" icon in VisualEditor's toolbar. Position your cursor after the sentence or paragraph that the citation is intended to ...
For a citation to appear in a footnote, it needs to be enclosed in "ref" tags. You can add these by typing <ref> at the front of the citation and </ref> at the end. . Alternatively you may notice above the edit box there is a row of "markup" formatting buttons which include a <ref></ref> button to the right—if you highlight your whole citation and then click this markup button, it will ...
The automatic option is the easiest. Wikipedia can often auto-format a reference citation if you just insert the website URL and click "Generate". Take a look at the citation that it then creates. To accept it, click "Insert". You can then modify the details, if VE has got something wrong, such as the publication date, by clicking "Edit".
The citation link will point to the first Harvard reference in the References section that matches both the author(s) and publication date (see examples below). Both the in-text citations and the references at the bottom of the page have format rules. For a full description of their format with examples, see Harvard referencing.