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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:
The opposite of an inline citation is what the English Wikipedia calls a general reference. This is a bibliographic citation, often placed at or near the end of an article, that is unconnected to any particular bit of material in an article, but which might support some or all of it.
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.
Full citations are collected in footnotes or endnotes, or in alphabetical order by author's last name, under a "references", "bibliography", or "works cited" heading at the end of the text. This style of citation was a type of referencing used on Wikipedia until September 2020, when a community discussion reached a consensus to deprecate this ...
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.
This page contains examples of various types of inline citations. Variations on all of the examples included here exist throughout Wikipedia. As of July 2009, Wikipedia's guideline on citation styles includes the following guidance:
Verify that any inline citations or general references adequately support the contents of the article. To do this the sources must be relevant, reliable and verifiable. If the article does not already have adequate general references in a References section or inline citations, then attempt to add some.
Five references are provided early on: two textbooks, a specialized monograph on aldol reactions, and two review articles. Most readers would assume that the bulk of the statements in the comparatively short Wikipedia article could be verified by checking any of these references, and so it may only be necessary to provide additional in-line references for controversial statements, for recent ...