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This guide helps beginners reference Wikipedia articles without using templates, providing clear instructions and examples.
Inline citations are usually small, numbered footnotes like this. [1] They are generally added either directly following the fact that they support, or at the end of the sentence that they support, following any punctuation. When clicked, they take the reader to a citation in a reference section near the bottom of the article.
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 ...
Sometimes it will be tagged first with a "citation needed" template to give editors a chance to find and add sources, but some editors will simply remove it because they question its veracity. This tutorial will show you how to add inline citations to articles, and also briefly explain what Wikipedia considers to be a reliable source.
Citations can also be placed as external links, but these are not preferred because they are prone to link rot and usually lack the full information necessary to find the original source in cases of link rot. In cases where citations are lacking, the template {} can be added after the statement in question.
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:
Simply use the citation template and <ref> tags as you would for any other footnote, but define an "image" group in the <ref> tag. To create the references list, add a second {{reflist}}, also specifying the image group. In the examples below, the citation is underlined, and the relevant parts defining the image group are in bold.
If you are using the inline reference citation style in your article (using <ref> tags to create footnotes), then these templates would go inside the <ref> tags as follows: <ref>{{cite book|author=...}}</ref> See full list of citation templates at Wikipedia:Citation templates. For other templates, see Wikipedia:Template namespace.