Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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:
Citations are important in Wikipedia to ensure that information comes from actual, reliable sources (WP:V, WP:CITE). There are three preferred ways of citing sources: Footnotes; Footnotes with list-defined references; Shortened footnotes
General references and other full citations may similarly be either combined or separated (e.g. "References" and "General references"). There may therefore be one, two, three or four sections in all. It is most common for only citation footnotes to be used, and therefore it is most common for only one section ("References") to be needed.
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 in-text cite may be defined with a name so they can be reused within the content and may be separated into groups for use as explanatory notes, table legends and the like. The reference list shows the full citations with a cite label that matches the in-text cite. The cite label is a caret ^ with a backlink to the in-text cite. When a named ...
A citation to a reference must verify the statement in the text. To verify the statement "Mike Brown climbed Mt. Everest", you cannot rely on a general reference about Mt. Everest or a reference on Mike Brown. You need to cite a source that directly supports the statement about his achievement.
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.
Sometimes the reference you want to add doesn't fall into any of these categories (for example, perhaps you want to cite a speech). In this case, you can enter the information fully manually using the "Basic form". (These types of references are currently easier using Wiki markup citations).