Help:Referencing for beginners

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References (or ref or just trusted sources ), on Wikipedia, it's important to verify the content and notify the reader about the source. Any editors may delete unsupported statements, and articles that are not truth-supported may be deleted. When adding content to articles, mention your sources to help readers verify facts or find more details. It's also useful for updating or improving existing references.

This page shows you how to give an inline quote using the ref tag, which results in the replaced number of footnotes, like this: ^[1] There is another acceptable system, including the use of inline reference inserts and general references. As a general practice, the main contributor must first select a reference system for the article.

Video Help:Referencing for beginners

Good reference

Quotes should verify the statement in the text. To verify the "Mike Brown climb Mount Everest" statement, you can not rely on general references about Mount Everest or references to Mike Brown. You need to quote a source that directly supports a statement about his achievement. Wikipedia does not publish original research (for example, your unpublished essay or research, or self-published).

An encyclopedia is, by its very nature, a neutral written summary of the mainstream knowledge that exists on a topic. But you can not copy and paste text that you find anywhere, except for short quotes. Ideally all information should cite credible sources, such as published books and mainstream press publications. Blogs, social media, fan sites, and extreme minority texts are usually unacceptable, as are other Wikipedia articles.

If the reference source is a long book, paper, or article, you should provide specific chapters, sections, or page numbers if possible.

Maps Help:Referencing for beginners

Before getting started

Before you add a reference, you may want to check that there is a section where the footnotes will appear. Find the section that contains the & lt; reference/& gt; or {{reflist}} reference, to the bottom of the page, under the "See also" section and above the "External links" section. If the section does not exist yet, click on the "Edit" tab to start editing the page and enter this code in the appropriate place:

 == Reference ==  {{Reject}} 

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Inserting a reference

Generally references are added directly after the information they support, at the end of the sentence and after the punctuation. Wikipedia allows editors to use citation systems that allow readers to understand where the information came from, and strongly encourages the use of inline quotations. Common methods of placing an inline quote include footnotes, footnotes, and parenthetical references.

There are three basic methods for adding references to the article text. You can use either, or a combination:

• Use the refToolbar to fill out a form with bibliographic information (requires JavaScript)
• Manually type in the code and bibliographic information
• Using VisualEditor, an experimental tool that's being beta-tested for editing Wikipedia pages

Using refToolbar

refToolbar, which appears above the edit box in a browser that supports JavaScript, can be used to easily add correctly formatted citations. In addition, refToolbar has the ability to automatically populate bibliographic data for many websites, published books, and academic journal articles, which can reduce the errors and cut-and-paste the boring and retyping of that information.

If your browser does not support JavaScript or disabled, refToolbar will not work (see Template: Quote for what to type manually).

Click the play button on the picture on the right to see the video tutorial on how to use refToolbar.

1. If you do not see the drop-down menu labeled Ã, Templates Ã, in the toolbar above the edit window, first click " Quote " in top of toolbar to enable refToolbar.
2. Position the editing cursor in the text where you want the numbered links to your quote to appear. This should be at the end of relevant phrases, sentences, or paragraphs whose quotes are verified (after any punctuation, see MOS: REFPUNC for more information). Do not position the cursor at the very end of the article or in the == Reference == - place it directly after quote text verify .
3. Click on the drop-down menu labeled Ã, Templates Ã, , and select the type of quote you want to add ("web quotes" for the website, "news quotes" for newspaper articles, " write a book "for a book, and" cite a journal "for an academic journal).
4. After you select a type of quote, a new window will appear with a number of blank fields to fill. Fill in as many areas as you can. You can leave some fields blank, but be sure to at least give "Title".
   1. If you quote from website , make sure to enter the web address of the page in the "URL" field, then click the icon to the right of it. Software can sometimes automatically fill many fields for you. You must verify that the information is correct, because it is sometimes incorrect, incomplete, or poorly formatted. Click on the button next to the "Access Date" field to indicate that you are checking the information on the website you are quoting today.
   2. If you quote from books , there is a feature that will automatically populate many areas of information. If you can find the ISBN of the book, enter it into the ISBN field in the form, then click the icon to the right of it. The software will automatically fill in many fields for you. You must verify that the information is true, because it is sometimes wrong, incomplete, or poorly formatted (especially if there are many authors). You should also add the page number, language, or other information if relevant.
   3. If you quote from journals , similar features may use PMID for many medical journal articles, or DOI for academic journals.
5. If there is a possibility that the reference can be used more than once in an article, you should give it an optional "refname", as discussed in the same #Rame section used more than once.
6. After you've filled out the form, you'll need to click Preview button at the bottom to see the generated Wikisource code will be included, plus the quotes shown as will appear in the finished article.
7. When you're satisfied, click the Insert button will close the form and add the code for your quote to the edit window in the location you've selected. When you preview or publish your edits, this information will appear as a superscript numbered format reference, including a URL link if you specify it.

When your edits are published, the citation text in the body of the article will automatically appear in the References section. The references added using refToolbar can still be edited manually after being added; details on how to create or edit references manually are discussed in the Manual References section later in this tutorial.

Build citations without superscript

The refToolbar method can also be used to easily build correct and complete quotes for the "Further reading" or "Bibliography" section of an article, which does not use numbered superscripts. Use refToolbar as described above, and insert a quote in the section you added. Then, manually edit the newly-entered Wikisource code to remove & lt; ref & gt; and & lt;/ref & gt; tags. For books, the recommended practice is to always include ISBNs, if any.

Manual reference

After you check that there is a section where the footnotes will appear, the next step is to add the actual reference into the article text. The code to do this applies at the end of the relevant phrases, sentences, or paragraphs where the note refers (after any punctuation, and without a space before the start & lt; ref & gt; tag).

& lt; ref & gt; freetext & lt;/ref & gt;

Any text, format, or template you place between these two tags will be visible in the "References" section as your reference text.

Do not not place the content in & lt; ref & gt; & lt;/ref & gt; tags after & lt; reference/& gt; tag or {{reflist}} template - - they are included in the body of the article, at the point you want the link to the footnote to appear.

Trial

First, open the browser window new to view, while still able to refer to this Help page in its original browser window (or browser tab). Place your cursor in the window you just opened, open the edit box (Windows: ? Cmd Click), copy the following text (insert your own text where it is shown), paste it at the bottom of your page, and then publish it:

When you publish the page, you will see this on your screen:

This is the text you want to verify by reference. ^[1]

1. ^{^} Reference details are here

You can also use Sandbox to test this edit.

Information to include

You need to enter enough information to allow readers to find your sources, such as author names, article titles, publishers, and publication dates. For an online newspaper source, it might look like this:

It appears as:

Plunkett, John. "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of buying panic", The Guardian , London, October 27, 2005. Retrieved 27 October 2005.

Note the single brackets around the URL and the title of the article. The format is:

Make sure there is space between the URL and the title. This code generates a hidden URL and the title is displayed as a link. Use two apostrophes on either side of the name of the newspaper (to produce italics) and quotation marks around the article title.

The date after The Guardian is the date the newspaper article was originally published - this is the required information - and the date after "Retrieved" is the date you access the website, which is not important but can be useful for searching the web archive if dead link.

It is best to include a publishing place if it is not yet part of the name of the newspaper. This avoids the possibility of confusion with other newspapers of the same name. In the example, there is another newspaper called The Guardian published in world cities other than London.

You can use any quote style you want to order these components.

Reference not online

You can use a resource that is not online, but which you have found in the library or elsewhere - in this case, leave out irrelevant information. The example of the above newspaper will be formatted like this:

After you add this information and publish your edits, it appears as:

Plunkett, John. "Sorrell accused Murdoch of panic", The Guardian , London, October 27, 2005.

Here's an example for a book:

After you add this information and publish your edits, it appears as:

Charmley, John (2006). Masters and Politicians , p. 60. Penguin Books, London. ISBNÃ, 0140289712.

Make sure you place two quotes on either side of the title (to produce italics), rather than quotation marks.

Quote template

Optionally, you may prefer using citation template to compile the source details. Templates are placed between ref tags, and you fill in the fields you want to include. Such templates automatically format punctuation and other markup like italics and quotation marks.

The basic citation template can be found here: Wikipedia: Message template/Article source/Quick reference quote.

Using VisualEditor

You can use VisualEditor to add or edit references as well. VisualEditor is a way to edit pages without having to learn wikitext markup. If VisualEditor is already enabled for your account, then you will see "Edit" and "Edit source" in the article, not just "Edit". You can enable VisualEditor by signing in and entering the Edits in your preferences section. Uncheck the box that says "Disable visual temporary temporary in beta" editor, and publish your changes to your preferences.

The animated image shows how VisualEditor can populate the citation template automatically, which formats your reference for you. You can also enter plain text excerpts using the "Basic" option in the manual tab.

Position your cursor after a sentence or paragraph intended to support a quote. Click the "Quote" button in the VisualEditor toolbar. A dialog box will appear, with options for automatic formatting, manually populating templates or plaintext templates, or reusing existing citations.

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Date format

One of the three formats shown below is accepted for the date. The invalid date will be marked by an error message that will appear with a footnote reference. The ISO date, the last format displayed, is preferred by some editors for the "Date accessible" field, as it conveys the necessary information in a concise and unobtrusive way.

January 27, 2007

January 27, 2007

2007-01-27

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The same reference is used more than once

The first time the quoted reference appears in the article, you can specify the reference name simple reference ("refname") in the & lt; ref & gt; code. To avoid name collisions, the author name followed by publication year is a general choice, or a shortened version of the title. Especially what you want is a unique, memorable, and easy typed refname. For example, if the reference you are quoting is a book by an author whose family name is Smith , published in 2008 :

instead:

& lt; ref & gt; {{ Reference Detail }} & lt;/ref & gt;

You can use:

& lt; name ref = Smith2008 & gt; {{ Reference Detail }} & lt;/ref & gt;

The next time you quote the same reference in the article, you can use this shortcut instead of retyping (note "/" at the end):

& lt; ref name = Smith2008/& gt;

You can then use as many refname shortcuts as you want (but never forget "/", or will empty the rest of the section; this error looks very confusing when it happens, but is easily fixed).

Please note (as listed more fully below) that the name of the refren you select can only contain spaces if you include names in quotation marks, e.g. if you want to place a space between Smith and 2008 in refname, then you should use & lt; ref name = "Smith 2008" & gt;... For simplicity and to avoid confusing other editors, it's better to remove spaces from refname.

For an example article where there are three sources, and each is referenced three times, see William Bowyer (artist). For more details see WP: REFNAME.

Refname rule

Generating refnames as suggested above is very easy, but the complete rules are quite detailed. Names for footnotes and groups must follow these rules:

• Name is case-sensitive.
• The name can not be is purely numeric; they must have semantic values ​​so that they can be more easily distinguished from each other by human editors.
• Name must be unique - You may not use the same name to specify different groups or footnotes.
• Please consider keeping the reference name simple and limited to standard English alphabets and numbers. Failing that, including if space is used, the following technical restrictions become relevant:
  • Quotes are optional if the characters used are only AZ , az , numbers 0-9 , and the ! $% & amp; () *, -.:; & lt; @ [] ^ _ `{|} ~ . That is, all ASCII characters can be printed except # "'/= & gt ;? \ .
  • Inclusion of other characters, including spaces , requires that the reference name be enclosed in quotation marks; for example, name = " John Smith " .
  • Quotes should be a standard straight-line keyboard ( "); curly or other quotes will be parsed as part of the reference name.
  • Closed-by reference name may not include less than ( & lt; ) or a straight-line quote ( "). It may be passed with & amp; lt; and & amp; quot; , respectively.
• You can provide an optional reference name even when the reference name is not needed. This will make reuse of the reference more easily sourced. â € <â € <

References page

If the reference is used repeatedly is a book or paper or a long article, it is helpful to have a separate page reference for specific facts. To avoid redundant identical bibliographic information, you can use Template: Refpage, which adds the page number as a superscript after a regular reference superscript. For an example of how this is applied, see the article about Frank Oppenheimer.

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Alternate system

Notes and references

The above method is simple and combines references and notes into one section. Enhancements are putting full details of the references in their own section titled "References", while the notes that apply to them appear in a separate section entitled "Notes". Records can be included in the main article text in a short form. To add a quote:

it will appear on {{re-register}} at the end of the article. At the end of the article, the markup is as follows:

The separation of "Notes" and "References" in this way is in line with scientific work.

Footnotes, notes, and references

Further improvements used by some scientific editors are using notes and footnotes. For example, an article about Franz Kafka is referenced in this way, using two useful templates: {{sfn}} and {{efn}} . Throughout the article you added a reference:

 {{sfn | Smith | 1889 | p = 157}} or {{sfn | Smith | Jones | 1892 | pp = 213-218}}  

ie name, year and page reference or author, second author, year and page reference. The complete quote, generated by the above method is added (without the reference tag) to the Bibliography section.

 {{efn | Free text notes}}  

inserted in the text and will appear in {{notelist}} It has many uses.

The last part of the article provides links for references and notes: they take this sign.

This method is useful when you create multiple page references from a limited number of books. It depends on the author's name and the year of publication to create the link. Whichever system you use, try to be consistent.

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Column use

When using {{re-listing}}, the list can be divided into columns.

{{re-listing | xx em}} where xx is the column width in em. By setting the width in em, the number of columns will automatically be adjusted to the width of the screen.

The feature set column now no longer supports the options described above, which are more suitable for flexible formatting for different screen display sizes, from phones and tablets to widescreen "movie" screens. Forcing a fixed number of columns has been disabled in mobile view.

The number of columns used depends on the editor, but some key practices include:

• {{Re-register}} - 1 column (default): Where there are only a few Footnotes; see Silver State Arena (23:05, 28 December 2012)
• {{Reflist | 30em}} : Where there are many footnotes plus Bibliographic pages: see Ebola virus disease (06:28, June 23, 2013)
• {{Reflist | 20em}} : Where short footnotes are used; see NBR 224 and 420 Class (13:32, 1 August 2011) .

For example: Using {{Reflist | 30em}} will create a column with a minimum width of 30 em.

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Error message

Any error messages in the content or reference format will be reported in messages that appear with footnotes (usually at the bottom of the web page). Similarly, this is where the flag of WP: DEADLINK will appear. This avoids the main text flow of articles with messages that may not be of interest to the casual reader.

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Tools

There are a number of tools available to help with placement and citation formatting, some of which are internal tools and scripts while others are available from external sites. For example, refill and Reflect edit references by adding basic information to a blank URL in the citation. Another example is the Simple quotation tool for Google Books that transforms the long Google Books URL into a complete {{cite book}} template ready to be inserted into the article.

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See also

• Help: Reference introducer with VisualEditor
• Help: Quick reference citation
• Wikipedia: Reference dos and not allowed
• Help: References and page numbers
• Help: Quote Style 1
• Wikipedia: Advanced footnote formatting
• Wikipedia: Parenthetical References
• Wikipedia: Library Wikipedia/Quote
• Template: The editor tool - {{Editor Tools}}

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Footnote

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Further reading

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Source of the article : Wikipedia