Wikipedia:Citing sources/example style
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Formatting of a Wikipedia article reference list is a secondary detail, and there is currently no consensus on a precise prescribed citation format in Wikipedia. Therefore, if you already use a particular citation style, especially the preferred style by scholars in a field related to the article you are editing, please use the citation style of your choice. However, if you cannot decide on what style to use or if you do not know what information to include, an example style based on the APA style is given below. In APA style, a widely accepted format for writing research papers, the references are listed in alphabetical order by author, and by year for identical authors. Common alternatives to APA style are MLA style and Harvard referencing.
Some editors prefer to use templates to format references, though the use of such templates is not required; see the summary of citation templates; for users familiar with the citation process, seeking a reference, a quick reference exists.
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[edit] Books
- Lincoln, Abraham; Grant, U. S.; & Davis, Jefferson (1861). Resolving Family Differences Peacefully (3rd ed.). Gettysburg: Printing Press. ISBN 0-12-345678-9.
For an edited book, put "(Ed.)" or "(Eds.)" in parentheses after the last author, before the date.
The ISBN (which is wikified automatically) is optional. If a book does not have an ISBN number, an LCCN number may be used instead. Note, however, that use of ASIN numbers in Wikipedia is considered controversial.
For a specific article or chapter in an edited book, use:
- Pooh, Winnie T. & Robin, Christopher (1926). "Modern techniques in heffalump capture". In A. A. Milne (Ed.), The Karma of Kanga, pp. 23–47. Hundred Acre Wood: Wol Press.
A good guideline is to list author names as they are written in the original article/book, without further abbreviation. The APA guidelines recommend abbreviating first names to initial letters instead, but since Wikipedia has no shortage of space, you need not abbreviate names. Indeed, there are good reasons to include the full names of authors; such information makes it much easier to find the cited work, and it also makes it possible to find other related information by the same author.
If Wikipedia has a page for the book, make the book title a link to it, but retain the full reference (for example, for printing). If the authors are notable (as above) and have not already been linked to from the article, then make their names link to their pages. It is also occasionally relevant to link a publisher, place of publication, etc.
(See also: {{cite book}}.)
[edit] Electronic equivalents
As service providers begin making books available online it will become increasingly useful to cite them in the encyclopedia. Eventually we can begin linking all book citations to their electronic equivalents. Here is an example citation for Google Print:
- Nash, Jay Robert (1994). Alferd Packer. In Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen & Outlaws. Da Capo Press. p. 250. ISBN 030680591X. Google Print. Retrieved April 13, 2005.
Amazon's search inside the book feature provides less data to non-registered users but is still quite useful. Consider:
- Nash, Jay Robert (1994). Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen & Outlaws. Da Capo Press. p. 250. ISBN 030680591X. Amazon Books. Retrieved April 13, 2005.
Note that this is merely an example, and that the works of Jay Robert Nash are, for various reasons, not suitable as reference material.
[edit] Journal articles
Journal articles are formatted much as a chapter in a book would be, for example:
- Brandybuck, Meriadoc (1955). "Herb lore of the Shire". Journal of the Royal Institute of Chemistry 10 (2), 234–351.
Note that the numbers after the journal title indicate: volume (issue number, optional), page numbers. Do not capitalize every word of the article title, only the first word, proper names, and the first word after a colon/period/dash. For an article that is available online, make the article title a link to the online version.
It is questionable whether one should abbreviate journal titles. On the one hand, many abbreviations are standardized ("J." for "Journal of") and library catalogs are often designed to help one look up abbreviated titles. On the other hand, abbreviations can be obscure to a person unused to scientific citations.
(See also: {{cite journal}})
[edit] Medical journal abstracts
A huge number of medical abstracts are readable online at http://pubmed.org. If your article relies on any medical paper, it's good to provide your readers with a link to the abstract. But often the URL that your browser shows you when you are at pubmed.org is a one-time-only URL, useless to anyone else. Even if the URL is not a one-time URL, here is the best way to cite pubmed.org: type (for example) PMID 15153440 as your citation — Wikipedia will link it and format it as PMID 15153440. If you're relying on text that is not in the abstract, you might still want to link by typing (for example) abstract at PMID 15153440, which Wikipedia will display as: abstract at PMID 12345.
[edit] Newspaper/magazine articles (or online periodicals)
- Blair, Eric Arthur (Aug. 29, 1949). "Looking forward to a bright tomorrow". New English Weekly, p. 57.
Or, for articles without a named author, put the title first:
- "On the importance of modesty". (May 5, 1821). Pravda, pp. B1, C12.
Again, for online articles, make the article title a link to the URL; it may not be possible to supply a page number in this case, for example:
- Chalmers, Rachel (Sep. 1, 2000). "Guru of the Unix gurus". Salon.
(See also: {{cite news}}.)
[edit] Web sites and articles (not from periodicals)
To cite an entire Web site, without specifying a specific document on the site, simply give the site's URL in the article text (this is an APA recommendation). In Wikipedia, a simple URL beginning with "http://" is automatically rendered clickable as well, which is what you want. Here is an example of such text: "Slashdot is a popular web site at http://slashdot.org/ ".
Specific web pages (or sets of pages) are cited like books are (and you make the title a link), but with a retrieval date:
- Perens, Bruce (June 1997). The Open Source Definition. Open Source Initiative. Retrieved on 2007-01-26.
The parenthesized date should be the date/year the document was created, or last edited; this should be omitted if it cannot be determined. The "Retrieved" information helps a reader retrieve the same version that the writer viewed, using tools such as the Internet Archive.
Note that it is a common alternative in Wikipedia to have a section labelled External links (after the References) and list various links to other sites and to pages within them.
Because the Web is dynamic, it is possible that a web page used as a reference may become inactive. Do not remove such inactive references—even inactive, they still record the sources that were used. Make a note of the date that the original link was found to be inactive. If an Internet Archive copy of the page is known, add a link to that.
(See also: {{Cite web}}.)
[edit] Other-language wikipedias
When you use an article from a different-language Wikipedia as a reference, it belongs in the reference section. Use an external link rather than an interwiki link to avoid an unnecessary self-reference:
- Citau les fonts from the Catalan-language Wikipedia. Retrieved December 27, 2004.
If you are getting some or all of your references second-hand, because you translated all or part of an article from a different-language Wikipedia, you may want to start your reference section (or part of it) with something like this (from Paragraph 175):
- Much of the content of this article comes from the equivalent German-language wikipedia article (retrieved September 30, 2004). The following references are cited by that German-language article:
followed by a list of that different-language article's references.
[edit] Press releases
This is how to reference a press release:
- Siemens AG (July 13, 1999). Shell and Siemens to develop emission-free fuel cell power plant. Press release.
If the press release is available online, make the title a link to the URL.
[edit] Liner notes
This is how to reference the liner notes or sleeve notes of an album:
- Author of notes (Copyright year). Title of section in liner notes. In Title of album (pp. x-y) [CD liner notes]. City of recording company: Name of recording company.
An example:
- Russell, Paul (2003). Tangerine Dream Live in the 70s. In The Bootleg Box Set Vol. 1 [CD liner notes]. London: Sanctuary Records Group.
[edit] Combined with numbered footnotes
See for example Gymnopédie, an article using numbered footnotes (using the wikipedia:footnote3 system, which is now deprecated; Cite.php footnotes are now recommended) combined with book and journal references, as mentioned higher on this page. Other source citation techniques used on that same page: in-line external links, and, of course, wiki-links. Examples can be found at {{Ref/examples}}.
[edit] Notes
Example APA styles for many other document types can be found at the "Citation Style Guides" page. Ultimately, though, use your common sense — what information does the reader need in order to find the reference in question?
Page ranges should use an "en dash" (–, –), not a hyphen (-).
It is also useful to link author names to their Wikipedia page [if any], assuming that they have not already been linked to in the article text, to give background information on sources and other works they may have written.
