Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/example style

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[edit] Layout

The new layout for this is extremely unusable. The big table format that used to exist on WP:CITE was far more useful and much easier to use. It's too difficult to look up what the parameters are by going to each template definition. I can't tell which one of the various templates I need just by looking on this page. Please consider restoring it to the old layout. --Howcheng 22:35, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

This page isn't about the use of templates. Those are documented in Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles/Generic citations, which is also linked to from Wikipedia:Cite sources. —Steven G. Johnson 18:42, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
Excellent. Thank you much. --Howcheng 18:47, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Web sites and articles (not from periodicals)

It's stated in this section that if you're citing a website as a whole you don't need to give a retrieval date - I don't agree. Website locations can change, be taken over by different groups and so on. You should always include a retrieval date. Entry changed to reflect this.

ahpook 10:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Documentaries and DVDs

How can you reference these? (Smerk)

I second this question. I've been wondering for a long time now and it's not in the article. 207.38.226.34 06:25, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
I've found the video citing template! It's here template:cite_video and it's also listed in this larger article as well wikipedia:template_messages/sources_of_articles/generic_citations. 207.38.226.34 20:52, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Book Reference style

The suggested book reference style used here seems odd to me. Isn't it standard practice to list the authors as so:
Johnson, Bob and Joe Smith.
Rather than:
Johnson, Bob and Smith, Joe.
Kaldari 19:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The book referencing section includes a link to 'cite book' which has practically no information and a note telling people not to use it because it is outdated. I would like to use Wikipedia markup for citations, but having spent some time searching for help on this subject, feel I have no alternative but to hard code the references according to Wikipedia's current style, which seems to me to be a much poorer solution. Would love to hear that there is another way. 138.251.244.23 14:46, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed changes to format for Wikipedia Cite extension

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Changes to Cite.. —Michael Z. 2006-02-23 18:06 Z

[edit] Proposal to change format for Wikipedia journal citation

Most journals give citation of references in this style (example; pdf file):

Author, A. 2005. Article title. Journal 1: 2–3.

Note: no quotes round the article title, and no bolding of the volume number. I suggest we change to this style, in particular to be rid of the quotes. I've never seen them used in any journal. - MPF 18:36, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

What is the basis for the assertion that "most journals" do this? In fact, I believe this is used in some technical journals, where it can almost be assumed that every citation is a journal article. In a general reference like Wikipedia this is not the case, and quotation marks should be used to very clearly distinguish articles from books for the sake of general readers.
For the same reason, it may be better to explicitly label each part, something similar to this (without checking the details of established formats).
Smith, John (2006). “Article title”, in Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 3–4.
—Michael Z. 2006-03-05 18:45 Z
Does the article title include a comma at the end?? That just looks plain weird. - MPF 19:07, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
I moved it outside the quotes. Or should it be removed? —Michael Z. 2006-03-05 23:32 Z
  • I'm against the proposal. There needs to be something to set off the title visually from the author names. I like the bolding for the same reason. However there is a nasty little technical issue here: Some uses of the template may already have the quotes around the title field explicitly; with the template providing them as well, there may be some double-double-quotes showing up in various places. (They were there in WP:CITE itself, until I fixed it just now.) Maybe someone should send a bot around looking for these. --Trovatore 18:53, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
The date sets the authors off from the article title. So do the author's initials. No need for any quotes.
The technical comment there is worth noting too in another way - quotes can be added manually for those who want them, but they can't be removed, where they are not wanted. Forcing everyone to have the quotes is not going to encourage people to use the template - if it isn't liked and doesn't match normal conventions, the citations are going to be entered without the template. - MPF 19:07, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
The author's first name or initial (in the case of a sole author), or the last author's last name, could be confused as the first word of the title, if the year weren't there. The year usually is there, but it could also be part of the title. --Trovatore 19:21, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, MPF, the date sets off either an article title or a book title. You have to find the punctuation and read the virtually the whole line before you know which. This is ambiguous, and not the best choice of formats for general bibliographic use.
Regarding adding quotes manually: it's a very bad idea to mix formatting markup in with the data. If that is done, then you may as well not use templates. —Michael Z. 2006-03-05 23:32 Z

Personally, I don't like the bolding and I think it's out of place. Bolding is very rarely used in professional typography, because it is so extreme that it draws the eye from other parts of the page (italics are used for most emphasis in running text). This is why in Wikipedia it's generally used only for the title term in the leading line, and for some subheadings (notably, not even for the main section headings).

Bold formatting is definitely overkill for indicating volume in a bibliographic citation, where its intent is only to set off a single number from the adjacent elements of the line. Furthermore, it is ambiguous, because most readers have no way of knowing whether bold text indicates "volume" or "number", or something else. —Michael Z. 2006-03-05 19:04 Z

I hardly think it's ambiguous; it's one of the standard styles. For example it's the AMS style for BibTeX, which I believe is widely copied, so it's relevant to people who never pick up an AMS journal.
The AMS style has another virtue that I think we ought to consider: It italicizes the title, then puts the journal name in Roman. That way the title can't be confused with either authors or date on the left, or journal name on the right, and we don't need any quotation marks. I would strongly urge that we think about adopting this style. Here's an example cite:
  • Greg Hjorth, Actions by the classical Banach spaces, J. Symb. Logic 65(2000), no. 1, 392–420. MR 1782128 (2001h:03088)
Some remarks on this:
  1. I do prefer that the first author be listed last name first.
  2. I think I agree with moving the year up between author name and title and using 65(1) for vol. 65 no. 1, as is currently done.
  3. The stuff starting with MR relates to Mathematical Reviews; while this is of interest mainly to mathematicians, I do think the template should support it, and there could be a mention of it in the style manual as well. --Trovatore 19:21, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
This seems to be an old discussion, but FWIW it's now possible to handle MR within the existing template format; see {{MathSciNet}}. —David Eppstein 03:34, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
So you are suggesting we italicize article titles and book titles? What gets italicized in a citation for an article in an anthology, or a chapter in a book—both? What is wrong with "needing" quotation marks?—they unambiguously indicate a part of a major work.
It is standard in general writing to italicize the titles of major works: movies, books, paintings, albums and to put quotations around minor works: articles, poems, chapters, songs—in both bibliographic citations and in running text. Why are on earth are people suggesting parting from this convention for just some things, and ending up with completely inconsistent formatting? This is an encyclopedia! Can't you separate yourself from your favourite technical style for long enough to see that it we have to be consistent in many different contexts? —Michael Z. 2006-03-05 23:32 Z
What's wrong with needing quotation marks is, they're aesthetically ugly. I do prefer them to having nothing to distinguish the title from the authors, but I think italics are better still. I am not particularly concerned if this winds up specifying one style for book citations and a different one for journal cites, with no overarching theory connecting them; books are books and journals are journals, and we can use different styles for them if there's a good reason to do so. --Trovatore 23:39, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
There's a good reason not to: for consistency and ease of understanding for non-technical readers. (If you think quotation marks are too imposing, an alternative could be to use ‘single quotation marks’.) And you're still ignoring the question of how to format an article in a book—both italicized? —Michael Z. 2006-03-06 00:47 Z
It's not really about "imposing"; they're just ugly. They'd be less ugly if you could get the directional typeset "inverted commas", but I expect that would introduce problems with availability of the fonts. I haven't checked how AMS does articles in books (I take it you mean something like a handbook, right? Ordinary books don't have "articles") but my guess is whatever they do is fine. --Trovatore 01:03, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm all for using real typographic quotation marks (“...”) in favour of the yucky typewriter ticks, if that's the only thing you have against the format! I don't think there's any problem with using them, especially in a case like this where they will be part of a template, and there's no need for editors to figure out how to type them.
There are a number of parts which might be cited in one or another kind of book: a chapter or section, a story in an anthology, a poem in a collection, or an article in an academic compendium or conference proceedings. The title of a web page and name of the site are handled similarly, and there are probably other media where consistent formatting for a major work and minor part of it should work the same way (e.g., perhaps an audio track on an audio CD), and probably should be formatted consistently and be interchangeable with all of these. —Michael Z. 2006-03-06 01:21 Z
I don't think the “...” marks look any better. I meant the ones that curl concave-right for the open-quotes, with the dot at the bottom, and concave-left for the close-quotes, with the dot at the top. --Trovatore 01:29, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
The journal Hydrological Processes uses the following formats for journal and book citations.
Mayo LR, Meier MF, Tangborn WV. 1972. A system to combine stratigraphic and annual mass balance systems: a contribution to the IHD. Journal of Glaciology 11(61): 3–14.
Paterson WSB. 1967. Physics of Glaciers, 1 edn. Pergamon Press, Oxford, UK.
I don't think the journal citation template should add quotation marks to article titles. Walter Siegmund (talk) 01:53, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I really don't like the above style; author names and dates could too easily be read as part of the article title. The Journal of Symbolic Logic has a nice style using small caps for author names, but I doubt those are available to us.
Looking through the JSL, I see they do the following: Authors in small caps, article in italics, journal in bold italics. If there's a book, it's in bold italics. So a chapter of a book is italics, then the book title is bold italics. We could consider that even if we don't have small caps; the names of the authors could be roman, as they're separated by several items from other items in roman. Sample cite:
  • Hjorth, Greg, Actions by the classical Banach spaces, J. Symb. Logic vol. 65 (2000), no. 1, 392–420.
I admit the bold italics look a bit aggressive, but they do solve the consistency problem Mzajac is worried about. --Trovatore 02:05, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
If the only problem is separating the author and year from the title, then it's easily solved:
  • Mayo LR, Meier MF, Tangborn WV (1972): A system to combine stratigraphic and annual mass balance systems: a contribution to the IHD. Journal of Glaciology 11(61): 3–14.
  • Paterson WSB (1967): Physics of Glaciers, 1 edn. Pergamon Press, Oxford, UK.
There can be no confusion of the year with the title, and no confusion of the authors with anything. Furthermore, apart from the colon (my own personal preference), it's exactly what appears in many scientific journals (I bet there are even some that put the colon in). Quote marks are unnecessary, ugly, and, at least in biology, unused. --Stemonitis 10:17, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Why is it impossible for a title to begin with a four-digit number in parentheses followed by a colon? Not that I have a plausible example in mind, but it's not really the point anyway. The point is, they're not visually distinct enough. They really should be in a different typeface, or weight, or whatever it is you call those things, so you can pick the title out easily. --Trovatore 14:55, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
That really is a bizarre argument. Who would ever interpret "Smith & Jones (1994). Observations on a fascinating phenomenon. Journal of Boring Studies 77: 89-92." as being a paper called "(1994). Observations on a fascinating phenomenon"?!??! It's entirely unreasonable. It's much more likely that a paper's title will begin with quote marks, which would look even worse inside quotes:
  • Smith & Jones (1994). ""Observations" - a scientific myth." Journal of Boring Studies 77: 89-92.
I have seen a few papers beginning with quote marks recently, but never one beginning with an open bracket or year. And I really don't understand how a title set off by a year in brackets and an italicised journal name can be seen as not "visually distinct". --Stemonitis 15:17, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
This is subjective of course, but I find that the title simply does not stand out enough from the names of the authors and the year, given the style you suggest. I think the title should be in italics or otherwise made easier to pick out. I don't really like the quote marks either, but they're certainly better than keeping everything in roman until you get to the journal name. --Trovatore 15:24, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
If an article's title has quotation marks in it, then we follow the normal rules of nested quotes: single quotation marks inside double ones. It's not quite as common, but slightly better and less obtrusive would be to use the British convention: single quotation marks for all article titles, and double quotation marks for nested quotes:
  • Smith & Jones (1994). ‘“Observations”—a scientific myth,’ in Journal of Boring Studies, vol. 77, pp. 89-92.
—Michael Z. 2006-03-06 22:43 Z
Is this really a British convention? I've never seen it. In particular, the comma inside the quotes looks very un-British to me. --Stemonitis 07:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
British books tend to use single quotation marks for most quotes, and double quotation marks when nesting another quote inside them. I don't know if this applies to bibliographic entries for articles as well, though. —Michael Z. 2006-03-07 16:45 Z
Trovatore, “ ” appear as the 66 99-shaped curly quotation marks on my system; what do they look like on yours? I think there must be a font or Unicode issue affecting your display—maybe the text is just too small for their details to be differentiated on your system. If you're on Windows, turn on ClearType font smoothing (in Control Panel→Display→Appearance→Effects), otherwise (in my experience) the font rendering sucks.
True small caps don't work because web browsers don't really support them, in turn because there are no common fonts which include small caps. Using CSS formatting we can create passable small capital letters, but they're not guaranteed to look great on every system or in every font. It's too bad (the articles' title term in the leading line would be great in small capitals).
Here's an example of fake small capitals, created with CSS.
  • Hjorth, Greg, Actions by the classical Banach spaces, J. Symb. Logic vol. 65 (2000), no. 1, 392–420.
It would look even better if the display font had text figures (Georgia specified):
  • Hjorth, Greg, Actions by the classical Banach spaces, J. Symb. Logic vol. 65 (2000), no. 1, 392–420.
Anyway, that does accomplish the formatting consistency problems, but it wouldn't be my first choice becuse, 1) I find that quotation marks for articles is the most familiar unambiguous convention, and 2) I still think using bold, especially bold-italic, is too heavy. —Michael Z. 2006-03-06 04:15 Z
Here's a screencap of the way the quotes look: Image:QuoteMarks.jpg If I look really close I can see there is some concavity in the right direction, but I still think they look horrible. --Trovatore 05:22, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Wikispecies uses smallcaps (example) - it looks neat, and I'd have no objection to using this style. The conversion from lower case to smallcap is automatic, too (i.e., you don't have to enter the names in caps). - MPF 09:43, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
T, that's just what the designer of your default font made the quotation marks look like, and I don't see what's wrong with them. No offence, but the only solution is to change the font in your user style sheet, or learn to live with them. Perhaps you just don't like quotation marks. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2006-03-06 16:45 Z

[edit] GAL (get a life)

  • JA: Do you people really have nothing better to do with your time? WP should not be in the business of making up "yet another style sheet" (YASS) -- APA has already made a full-blown cottage industry of that. It should be abundantly obvious that trying to impose a WikiWide style for citations is just asking for the alienation of scholars from all sides, who waste far too much time with this stuff in their own bailiwikis to bother rewriting citations for this one. Now go write an article or something. Jon Awbrey 18:34, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
    • No need to be unpleasant, Jon. Stylistic consistency between articles is not the most important issue facing Wikipedia, but it's a nice thing to have if you can get it. Since the outcome of the consensus here, if there ever is one, will be reflected in the templates {{cite journal}} and {{cite book}}, there is no need for anyone who isn't interested in the issue to bother reading the style manual; all they have to do is use the templates. --Trovatore 19:38, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TIC (tongue in cheek)

  • JA: I don't know what the emoticon for "tongue in cheek' (TIC) is, but I'd probably use it on most every message. I care very much about accurate, complete, and helpful citations, which is precisely what worries about the prospect of WikiPedia falling prey to the sort of folks who created the APA style sheet industry. I have gotten used to nine or ten different style sheets over the years, each tailored to the needs of a specific type of study, and the very thing that the American Procrustean Association fails to understand is that one sheet does not fit all. So the thing that worries as I track this discussion with a semiopen third eye, is the prospect of some stylobot someday wreaking havoc with the information that I take some care to be accurate, complete, and helpful with. I know the knee-jerk response here, cause I've heard it before, people are always saying that it won't happen here, right up until it does. Ouch! I just bit my tongue. Jon Awbrey 20:10, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia is inconsistent

Please abandon any project of imposing a house style on Wikipedia by the consensus (even if there is one) of a few editors on this page, especially one based on your own aesthetics rather than actual practice outside Wikipedia. I do not care deeply about such issues, but many do. I do not believe there is consensus among the many on what WP house style should be.

  • If there is no such consensus, an effort to impose one is divisive, disruptive, and obnoxious.
  • if there is a consensus, it will impose itself whatever is done here, even against what is done here, as each editor modifies the bibliography he is editing. It would be a shame if this process deprived WP of useful tools like {{cite journal}}.

Running a large wiki is like cooking a small fish. Please don't scorch it. Septentrionalis 20:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Standardization

Some editors have very good points about not imposing a "house style". It certainly would be inappropriate to invent a new citation style, considering that so many different ones already exist and are widely used. And I believe it would definitely be a mistake to pick a style used by a technical journal and impose it widely across Wikipedia, although I don't see a problem with choosing a widely familiar style aimed at general readers and using it in articles on science, astronomy, math, etc.

But since there are advantages to some consistency, but Wikipedia is inconsistent, it might be nice if the various citation templates and the cite extension had an optional parameter which lets the editor choose from several different widely-used, standardized citation styles. Something like the following:

  • {{cite book | style=Harvard ... }}
  • <references style=Chicago>

—Michael Z. 2006-03-09 16:41 Z

Good points by Septentrionalis and Michael. I propose that in a day or two, unless there are major complaints, that I will remove the title quotes and volume bolding from this Cite sources project page and the relevant templates, for the following reasons:
  1. Based on checking the citation styles used in a large number of journals, title quotes are extremely rare, and bolding of volume infrequent;
  2. That if they are desired, quotes and volume bolding can be added in citations in individual articles, but they cannot be removed individually if the template imposes it.
  3. The KISS principle.
MPF 11:00, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
I would oppose that. I think that results in too spare a style, in which it's too hard to pick out the relevant items visually. However, I would prefer that as a standard style to no standard at all. --Trovatore 16:56, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
I would oppose this, too. I don't think a survey of technical or academic journals is a good basis for the bibliographic style in a general encyclopedia at all. A survey of the formats used in encyclopedias and general books on humanities subjects would be much better.
Personally, I think the quotation marks should stay, but the bold text is out-of-place. For citing journals, I would prefer a style which is completely self-documenting for non-academics, like "vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 3–4." —Michael Z. 2006-03-14 17:50 Z
You seem to be missing an important point. If the title quotes are included in the template, you force everyone to use them, regardless of whether they want them or not. If they are not included, they can be added optionally with the title text for those who desire to have them. So far, the opposition to their removal does not convince me that they should stay. - MPF 01:29, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree with MPF on this matter. I note that it is compatible with Michael Z. proposal (of 2006-03-09 16:41 Z) as long as one of the widely-used, standardized citation styles is the generic one suggested by MPF. I don't find bold volume numbers objectionable, probably because they are customary in the Astrophysical Journal and some other scientific journals. But quotation marks are uncommon. Occasionally, I've seen them used for the chapter title in a book citation, but they are easily added when needed.
I would like to see more discussion of Michael Z.'s idea. It seems to me that it is compatible with the various wikiprojects in that it is likely that each can choose a style that is common and accepted in the literature of that project. I think it will be difficult to gain acceptance for a style that is not similar to that used in the literature for that subject. For most editors, an unfamiliar style will look wrong. Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:22, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I want to make it clear that we're talking about two different things here:

1. A default bibliographic style for Wikipedia should be a general one that is self-explanatory to non-academics: it should surround article and chapter names with quotation marks, and use the labels "vol.", "no." and "p./pp." instead of relying on the opaque use of position, parentheses, colons, and bolding to distinguish entities like volume, issue number, and page numbers—only academics who are accustomed to a journal's house style can distinguish these without a reference. Please stop citing your favourite academic journal as support for academic or technical bibliographic styles, because this will not sway me.

Yes, the quotation marks should be embedded in a template if an article is to be cited with them. The quotation marks are not part of the title, and entering them in a template's data field is a big mistake. It would be polluting the data set with formatting information, mixing metadata in with the data. In a template, the quotation marks are easy to add, remove, modify for all occurrences at once. In the data set, spread throughout a thousand WP articles, we woud be stuck with quotation marks in some instances and without them in others, without any embedded logic to help a bot sort out where they belong and where they don't.

2. Of course we know that Wikipedia is inconsistent. Editors are free to choose whichever bibliographic style consensus will allow. Perhaps the editors of an astronomy article will agree that an astronomical journal's style is appropriate (I would disagree, since it is an article in a general encyclopedia, but anyway...). Under this discussion subheading I am suggesting that the citation templates and/or cite.php extension be enhanced to allow editors to easily select an alternate style of choice and always have it formatted correctly according to a standard.

—Michael Z. 2006-03-15 03:10 Z

The one I suggested is a default bibliographic style that is self-explanatory, and very common in non-academic work as well as in academic journals. Please stop citing (or even not citing!) your favourite tabloid as support for a style that is so unusual as to be not self-explanatory (a title is a title, not a quotation!). - MPF 14:54, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
"1: 2–3" is not self-explanatory. Which of those numbers is the volume, which is the number, and which is the page number? I did not cite any tabloids. —Michael Z. 2006-03-15 18:30 Z
If so, then don't use them! No-one else does! - MPF 14:54, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I haven't entered quotation marks into the data of any templates. —Michael Z. 2006-03-15 18:30 Z
Errrr . . . not at the moment, it isn't! I'm not allowed to chose a bibliographic style that doesn't have these wierd gutter-press quote marks! My freedom has been substantially curtailed by the present {cite:journal} formatting. As it stands, I'm very strongly tempted to remove any cite:journal markup I find and make them plain text references, so that they are clear, easy to read, and follow standard usage - MPF 14:54, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
You're allowed to choose any style you like. In this section, I'm proposing that it be made easier for you. But if you feel that your human rights are being threatened by a template which follows the MOS, then you're welcome to remove cite:journal markup (I have done the same in some cases, for example to enter correct Harvard style in "T-34"; see {{wikiref}} and {{wikicite}}).
By the way, name-calling ("tabloid", "gutter-press") and hyperbole ("No-one else!") don't really help your argument. —Michael Z. 2006-03-15 18:30 Z
I love this suggestion; it allows different fields (arts, sciences, social sciences, etc. etc. etc.) to use the format usual to their journals. We scientists can have no quotes and bold volumes, while the humanities people can have their own format. It seems very unlikely that we're going to reach consensus any other way. It also has the advantage that a science article will look scientific, by having a scientific style of reference list, while a history article will look historical by its reference format. It increases the perceived reliability of Wikipedia within the relevant fields. The only other option would have been different templates for different disciplines. The next question is: how many styles are required, and how should they be formatted? We are in danger of almost every user wanting his/her own style, some with quotes, some without, some in italics, some boldface, some in small caps, some upside-down. I think all of science (probably including mathematics) can cope with a single format; I don't know about other fields. How about these for starters:
{{cite journal | style=science…
{{cite journal | style=humanities…
--Stemonitis 08:25, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be better to refer to specific style manuals, like APA, Harvard, Chicago, or the manuals of particular academic organizations, publishers or journals. That would eliminate the inevitable debate about what constitutes a particular style. —Michael Z. 2006-03-15 18:34 Z

I'm a new comer to this debate, having been dragged in from my recent forays into using various cite templates. I've scanned through the debate and it seems that there is little folks want in common except this - to let the reader know that the article has been created from reliable sources. To that end I don't think it matters much if one uses one particular format or another, as long as the formats are generally compatible with each other, and that the formats are compatible with someone who is adding a reference manually. So, I think having a whole slew of templates for difference purposes, be it so that we can pick and choose whether we want/need "style=Chicago" or "style=science" or anything more specific than that, is a good thing. Any efforts at limiting those choices at this point is fruitless and will lead to religious wars. Let the citation styles flourish and let the article authors and editors pick the style that works best for them and their articles. Articles written under a specific WikiProject will likely end up having the same style of reference across the project in the end. Does it matter if a series of articles about the NYC Subway has the same citation style as a set of articles about birds? - UtherSRG (talk) 12:18, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Anyone know how to set this up, then? - MPF 14:54, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
In the meanwhile, I've set up {{Cite journal2}}, which is a carbon copy of {{Cite journal}}, but without the quote marks. This is, I should point out, only intended to be a temporary solution; I didn't feel up to adding extra conditionals to the template. --Stemonitis 20:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! How does one set about converting existing usages of {{Cite journal}} to it? - MPF 00:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
What I did at Carcinus maenas was simply to do a search and replace, changing every "ite journal" to "ite journal2" (not knowing if I'd used "Cite" or "cite"), and it seemed to do the trick. [1] --Stemonitis 09:39, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Location of web citations

Regarding cite styling for web source, it appears that the most common method is to use [http://www.domain.tld/page] at the end of a sentence. Is there a preferred location for this, before or after the period? To me, before the period makes more sense and is more readable. I can't seem to find a standard for this. Suggestions? --Kickstart70 19:03, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree before the period - otherwise it reads as the reference is in, and applies to, the following sentence. - MPF 11:00, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Ideally these should not be used; if the page's content changes or it is removed, it is difficult to ascertain what was cited. Johnleemk | Talk 17:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Internal link for publication year in citation of reference?

Under the heading Books are the following guidelines:
If Wikipedia has a page for the book, make the book title a link to it... 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.
What about the year? -- Thanks, Deborahjay 15:51, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Not sure if this is what you want, but try just putting the year in brackets (i.e., [[1896]] shows up as "1896". SB Johnny 12:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - knew that; what's not clear to me is whether this is recommended style, unacceptable, or discretionary. -- Deborahjay 14:46, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is recommended. Kaldari 21:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citing an event (i.e. a concert)

In the Lupe Fiasco article there is a reference to a live performance he did. What would be the proper format to cite an even or live performance (I'm fairly certain the current format on the article is wrong)??? --Jaysscholar 13:31, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Also, there doesn't seem to be a template for this. Is there?? --Jaysscholar 13:32, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

According to this site, a live performance should be cited like
Cello Concerto No. 2. By Eric Tanguy. Cond. Seiji Ozawa. Perf. Mstislav Rostropovich. Boston Symphony Orch. Symphony Hall, Boston. 5 Apr. 2002.
How excatly would I use this on wiki? and how would it relate to the specific reference I'm using. Using the info that the previous user put and the url he left, I'm thinking :
Fiasco In Seattle. By Black Clouds CommitteeXGoods. Perf. Lupe Fiasco, Carter Mayne, D Shokk, & DJ Scene. Neumos on Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington. 19 Jul. 2006.
Any feedback?? --Jaysscholar 14:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, since nobody responded I'll keep the format I came up and use it for the article--Jaysscholar 13:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Underlining is for typewriters, corresponding to italics for typeset books and computer screens. I've updated the examples here. —Michael Z. 2006-08-17 00:19 Z

Thanks. I updated Lupe's article. --Jaysscholar 12:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chapter titles should be quoted

I think chapter titles should be quoted, because every formatting system that I can think of quotes chapter titles.

Also, further down on this "Citing sources" page, we say "Journal articles are formatted much as a chapter in a book would be" -- and then we give an example that has quotes around the article title. And the section on "Newspaper/magazine articles" on the article page gives two examples of quoted article titles.

I think there's a general principle across all formatting systems that all taken text is formatted, whether with italics or quoting or whatever. Titles are taken text. Dates, page numbers, and author names are pointers, not taken text, so they don't get formatted.

TH 21:23, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] OttoBib

I added a link to OttoBib.com, a free tool to generate an alphabetized bibliography from a list of ISBN numbers in MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian format (with a permalink). It is an extremely useful tool for citing sources.Dhaluza 15:53, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is this an essay, guideline, or what?

Reading the page through, it seems to me ropy in places and outdated in others. Is it worth updating this or is it just someone's notes? qp10qp 04:34, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

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