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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.
A citation template is like a handy form. Just fill it out, and the template takes care of the formatting. When you enter text into a template, you don't have to know what goes first, what goes where, and so on. The template takes care of displaying the citation for the reader. Changing the template automatically updates every citation that ...
A named reference or a sfn reference pair is transfered into the page by the standard copy and paste technique. Other Tools Re-Fill and Ref-links edit references by adding basic information to bare URLs in citations. Wikipedia tool for Google Books converts a long Google Books URL into a filled-out {} template which is pasted into an article.
A general reference is a citation that supports content, but is not linked to any particular piece of material in the article through an inline citation. General references are usually listed at the end of the article in a References section.
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:
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 ...
This example is the most basic and includes unique references for each citation, showing the page numbers in the reference list. This repeats the citation, changing the page number. A disadvantage is that this can create a lot of redundant text in the reference list when a source is cited many times. So consider using one of the alternatives ...