User:Gadget850/Cite

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[edit] Tutorial: How to use footnotes

This tutorial shows how to use Cite.php and citation templates to provide references for an article. While neither method is mandatory, they do provide a good way to consistently provide cites, and should always be used in an article that already uses these methods.

[edit] References

Including references in an article is simple once you understand that there are two systems that work together. The first part is called cite.php and is simply a way of inserting the reference. In simple form this is:

<ref> citation </ref>

Where <ref> is the start of the citation and </ref> is the end. References should be placed after the ending punctuation of the sentence like so: :The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.<nowiki><ref> citation </ref>

When viewing the article, it will look like this:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.^[1]

Scroll down to see the references. Notice that if you click on the cite link in the article you will jump to the reference and vice versa.

To show the references, you need to include this at the end of the article:

==References==

[edit] Reusing references

Sometimes you will use a reference more than once in an article. Instead of entering the full reference multiple times, you can used a named reference on the first instance:

<ref name="name"> citation2 </ref>

When you want to use the cite again, enter:

The name can be any text desired such as the author of the book or the web site referenced.

[edit] Formatting the citation

The second part is to properly format the footnote. If you are adding a note that amplifies the text, simply enter the desired text between the ref tags.

When entering a citation, the preferred method of fomatting the cite is to use a template. By using a template, you fill in the blanks and let the template do the work of formatting.

This is the general format of a cite for a web site, including the ref tags:

<ref>{{cite web | last = | first = | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = | url = | title = | format = | work = | publisher = | accessdate = }}</ref>

With information:

<ref>{{cite web | last =Berling | first =Michael | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = | url =http://www.vitn.homepage.t-online.de/quichott.htm | title =Quichotte | format = | work =Voices in the Net | publisher = | accessdate =2006-08-06}}</ref>

Note that the date is in ISO YYYY-MM-DD format. The user's preferences will auto-format the date.

Here is what the cite looks like uses in a sentence:

Pergamon (1986) is an album of electronic music released by Tangerine Dream.^[2]

[edit] Types of cites

Examples of the most commonly used cites are below. For more cites see Category:Citation templates. You can simply copy the wikicode here, paste it into your article and fill in the blanks.

To cite a general web page:

<ref>{{cite web |url= |title= |accessdate= |author= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |format= |work= |publisher= |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= }}</ref>

URL, title and accessdate are required. Format=PDF if it is a PDF file. Leave language blank for English.

To cite a news article:

<ref>{{cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |author= |coauthors= |title= |url= |format= |work= | publisher= |pages= |page= | date= | accessdate= | language= }}</ref>

Title is required.

To cite a book:

<ref>{{cite book |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |editor= |others= |title= |origdate= |origyear= |origmonth= |url= |format= |accessdate= |edition= |date= |year= |month= |publisher= |location= |language= |id= |doi = |pages= |chapter= |chapterurl= |quote = }}</ref>

Where ID is the ISBN or other reference number. When using the ISBN, enter it as ISBN followed by the number (like ISBN 0-9746479-1-8) and it will automatically be linked to the user preferred site.

[edit] Troubleshooting

Citations entered in this manner will not show in the preview. After you save your changes, scroll down to the references section and check the cite.

Some citation template fields are mandatory. If you forgot to enter a mandatory field, an error will will be displayed in the reference.
If you see a chunk of the article text in the references section, then you forgot to close the reference with </ref>.

[edit] Link cites

Why not just add a link directly in the sentence like [1]? It seems easy, but:

Since this article now has cites using two different systems, it now has two references marked with [1]. This is confusing.
It is not a full reference like you would expect to see in an encyclopedia.
If the link disappears there is not enough information for another editor to try to find a similar reference.

[edit] Test and convert

To check an article for problems with references you can use David Mertz' Citation Tool.
To update an older article that uses in-line links you can use Cyde Weys' References converter.