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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:
If you are creating a new page, or adding references to a page that didn't previously have any, remember to add a References section like the one below near the end of the article: ==References== {{reflist}} Note: This is by far the most popular system for inline citations, but sometimes you will find other styles being used in an article.
A general reference is a citation to a reliable source that supports content, but is not linked to any particular text in the article through an inline citation. General references are usually listed at the end of the article in a "References" section, and are usually sorted by the last name of the author or the editor.
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 ...
That's it! You're done. 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:
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.
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.
Footnotes with list-defined references Shortened footnotes 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.