Wikipedia:Citing sources

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"WP:CITE" redirects here. For information on citing Wikipedia articles, see WP:CITING.
✔ This page documents an English Wikipedia style guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.
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Wikipedia policy
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Ignore all rules

This page is a style guide, describing how to write citations in articles.

Wikipedia:Verifiability, which is policy, says that attribution is required for "direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged." Any material that is challenged, and for which no source is provided within a reasonable time (or immediately if it's about a living person), may be removed by any editor. For information about the importance of using good sources in biographies of living persons, see Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, which is also policy.

If you don't know how to format a citation, provide as much information as you can, and others will help to write it correctly.

Contents

[edit] Why sources should be cited

Main articles: Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research

Wikipedia is by its very nature a work by people with widely different knowledge and skills. The reader needs to be assured that the material within it is reliable: this is especially important where statements are made about controversial issues or living persons. The purpose of citing your sources is:

[edit] Use of terms

This guideline uses the terms "source," "reference," "citing" and "citation" interchangeably.

[edit] When to cite sources

Main article: Wikipedia:When to cite

[edit] When adding material that is challenged or likely to be challenged

Main article: Wikipedia:Verifiability

WP:Verifiability says: All material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a reliable, published source.

The need for citations is especially important when writing about opinions held on a particular issue. Avoid weasel words where possible, such as, "Some people say ..." Instead, make your writing verifiable: find a specific person or group who holds that opinion and give a citation to a reputable publication in which they express that opinion. Remember that Wikipedia is not a place for expressing your own opinions or for original research.

Because this is the English Wikipedia, English-language sources should be given whenever possible, and should always be used in preference to other language sources of equal caliber. However, do give references in other languages where appropriate. If quoting from a different language source, an English translation should be given with the original-language quote beside it. See also: Wikipedia:Verifiability#Non-English sources.

[edit] When quoting someone

Main article: Wikipedia:Verifiability

You should always add a citation when quoting published material, and the citation should be placed directly after (or just before) the quotation, which should be enclosed within double quotation marks — "like this" — or single quotation marks if it is a quote-within-a-quote — "and here is such a 'quotation' as an example." For long quotes, you may wish to use Quotation templates.

[edit] When adding material to the biography of a living person

Main article: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons

Biographies of living persons should be sourced with particular care, for legal and ethical reasons. All contentious material about living persons must cite a reliable source. If you find unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about a living person — whether in an article or on a talk page — remove it immediately! Do not leave it in the article while you request a source. Do not move it to the talk page. This applies whether the material is in a biography or any other article.

[edit] When checking content added by others

You can also add sources for material you did not write. Adding citations is an excellent way to contribute to Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check for organized efforts to add citations.

[edit] When uploading an image

Shortcut:
WP:CITE#IMAGE

Images must include source details and a copyright tag on the image description page. It is important that you list the author of the image if known (especially if different from the source), which is important both for copyright and for informational purposes. Some copyright licenses require that the original author receive credit for their work. If you download an image from the web, you should give the URL:

Source: Downloaded from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4280841.stm

If you got the image from an offline source, you should specify:

Source: Scanned from public record #5253 on file with Anytown, Somestate public surveyor

Any image with a non-free copyright license must be accompanied by a non-free use rationale (also called a fair use rationale) for each article in which the image is used.

[edit] How to cite sources

Shortcut:
WP:CITE#HOW

[edit] Citation styles

Further information: Citation, APA style, MLA style, The Chicago Manual of Style, Harvard referencing, Vancouver system, Bluebook, and Wikipedia:Citing sources/example style

There are a number of citation styles and systems used in different fields, all including the same information, with different punctuation use, and with the order of appearance varying for the author's name, publication date, title, and page numbers. Any style or system is acceptable on Wikipedia so long as articles are internally consistent. You should follow the style already established in an article, if it has one; where there is disagreement, the style or system used by the first editor to use one should be respected.

[edit] General references versus inline citations

Articles can be supported with references in two ways: the provision of general references – books or other sources that support a significant amount of the material in the article – and inline citations, which are mandated by the featured article criteria and (to a lesser extent) the good article criteria. Inline citations are references within the text that provide source information for specific statements. They are appropriate for supporting statements of fact and are needed for statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, including contentious material about living persons, and for all quotations.

[edit] Say where you found the material

Shortcut:
WP:CITE#SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT

It is improper to copy a citation from an intermediate source without making clear that you saw only that intermediate source. For example, you might find some information on a Web page which says it comes from a certain book. Unless you look at the book yourself to check that the information is there, your reference is really the Web page, which is what you must cite. The credibility of your article rests on the credibility of the Web page, as well as the book, and your article must make that clear.

[edit] Reference qualification in article text

An incontrovertible statement requires no qualification in the article apart from its reference. No further description would be needed with the following, for example:

The word caffeine comes from the French term for coffee: café.[1]

A statement open to controversy, regarding which the qualified supporting references conflict with one another, may need to include some elaboration. For example (from Super-recursive algorithm):

Martin Davis has described some of Burgin's claims as "misleading".[2]

Here it is important to identify in the text exactly who is making the claim, since it would be inappropriate for Wikipedia to advocate that "Burgin's claims are misleading."

[edit] Provide full citations

Shortcut:
WP:CITE#FULL

All citation techniques require detailed full citations to be provided for each source used. Full citations must contain enough information for other editors to identify the specific published work you used.

Full citations for books typically include: the name of the author, the title of the book or article, the date of publication, and page numbers. The name of the publisher, city of publication, and ISBN are optional, although publisher is generally required for featured articles. For journal articles, include volume number, issue number and page numbers. Citations for newspaper articles typically include the title of the article in quotes, the byline (author's name), the name of the newspaper in italics, date of publication, page number(s), and the date you retrieved it if it is online.

[edit] Provide page numbers

When citing books and articles, provide page numbers where appropriate. Page numbers should be included whenever possible in a citation that accompanies a specific quotation from, or a paraphrase or reference to, a specific passage of a book or article. The edition of the book should be included in the reference section, or included in the footnote, because pagination can change between editions. Page numbers are especially important in case of lengthy unindexed books. Page numbers are not required when a citation accompanies a general description of a book or article, or when a book or article, as a whole, is being used to exemplify a particular point of view.

[edit] Inline citation styles

[edit] Author-date referencing

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Author-date referencing.

[edit] Background and rules

According to The Oxford Style Manual, the author-date or Harvard system is the most commonly used reference method in the physical and social sciences (Ritter 2002). Author-date referencing can be especially useful when a single, large work has to be referenced by page number multiple times, as these separate citations would each require different footnotes.

Under the author-date referencing system, a reference source such as a book is cited in the text in parentheses, after the section, sentence, or paragraph for which the book was used as a source, using the surname of the author and the year of publication only, with the parentheses closing before the period, as in (Jones 2005), although parentheses should be outside the period when citing block quotes. Page numbers must be included in a citation that accompanies a specific quotation from, or a paraphrase or reference to, a specific passage of a book or article. They usually follow the date in this way: (Author 2006:28) or (Author 2006, p.28).

A full reference is then placed at the end of the text in an alphabetized list of "References".

In article, common rules:

  • When the author of the reference is named as part of the text itself, put the year in parentheses; for example "Smith (2005) says..."
  • For two authors, use (Smith & Jones 2005); for three or more authors, use (Smith et al. 2005).
  • If the same author has published two books in 1996, and both are being referenced in the text, this is written as (Clancy 1996a) and (Clancy 1996b).
  • If the date of publication is unavailable, use "n.d." (meaning, no date)
  • Newspaper articles may use the name of the newspaper and the date of publication after the sentence (The Guardian, December 17, 2005).
  • A book published long after the original publication may be cited (Marx [1867] 1967).
  • For a quotation that is within the text and marked by quotation marks, the citation follows the end-quotation mark ("), and is placed before the period (.), "like this" (Smith 2005).
  • For a quotation that is indented, the citation is placed after the period, like the following. (Smith 2005)
  • In cases where the author is unknown:
If the article is written for an organization or periodical then use its name, as in (Department of Transport 2001) or (National Geographic 2005),
otherwise, use the article title, italicized, as in (Advertising in the Western Cape 1990:14).

In a "References" section at the end of the article:

For a book: in the case of (Author 2005a) and (Author 2005b), this might be:

For an article: in the case of (Traynor 2005) or (The Guardian, December 17, 2005), this might be:

[edit] How to write them

Creating an anchor to the References section is highly recommended e.g. (Ritter 2002:40). To cite Ritter one would first create an anchor to Ritter's work in the References section:

<cite id=Ritter2002>* Ritter, R. (2002). ''The Oxford Style Manual''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860564-1</cite>

Then one would link to the anchor: [[#Ritter2002|Ritter 2002]] throughout the text, if necessary providing a page number. Author-date referencing is particularly useful for works which must be repeatedly referenced by page number; in the case of footnotes, one must create an entirely new footnote for each different page.

Otherwise, you may use a citation template to anchor author-date references.

[edit] Footnotes

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Footnotes.

[edit] What footnotes are used for

A footnote is a note placed in the proper end section of a page to comment on a part of the main text, or to provide a reference (a source) for it. The connection between the relevant text and its footnote is indicated by a number or symbol which appears both after the relevant text and before the footnote. Footnotes are often used to add information that might be helpful to later fact-checkers, such as a quotation that supports your edit.

[edit] How to write them
  1. Place a <ref> ... </ref> where you want a footnote reference number to appear in an article—type the text of the note between the ref tags.
  2. Place <references/> or {{reflist}} in an otherwise empty "Notes" or "References" section near the end of the article—the list of notes will be automatically generated here. If you want to create columns of notes, write {{reflist|2}}.

Example edit:

The Sun is pretty big,<ref>Miller, E: "The Sun", page 23. Academic Press, 2005</ref>
but the Moon is not so big.<ref>Brown, R: "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 51(78):46</ref>

== Notes ==
<references/>

Example rendered result:

The Sun is pretty big,[1] but the Moon is not so big.[2]

Notes

  1. ^ Miller, E: "The Sun", page 23. Academic Press, 2005.
  2. ^ Brown, R: "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78):46.

[edit] Ref tags and punctuation
Shortcut:
WP:REFPUNC

Material may be referenced mid-sentence, but footnotes are usually placed at the end of a sentence or paragraph. Footnotes at the end of a sentence or phrase are normally placed immediately after the punctuation, except for dashes, as recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style and other style guides.[3][4] Some editors prefer the in-house style of journals such as Nature, which place references before punctuation. If an article has evolved using predominantly one style of ref tag placement, the whole article should conform to that style unless there is a consensus to change it.

[edit] Section headings

Recommended section names to use for footnotes in Wikipedia are:

  • ==Notes==
  • ==Footnotes==
  • ==References==

Many editors use "Notes" as their preferred title for the footnotes section, as the same section can then hold general notes as well as source citations.

[edit] Maintaining a "References" section in addition to "Notes"

When footnotes are used, some editors find it helpful to maintain a separate "References" section, in which the sources that were used are listed in alphabetical order. With articles that have a lot of footnotes, it can be hard to see which sources have been used, particularly when the footnotes contain explanatory text. A References section helps readers to see at a glance which references were used.

When a separate reference section is included, the citations are listed there in alphabetical order, with the footnotes in a separate section entitled "Notes" or "Footnotes." Short footnotes may be used, giving the author(s), year, and the page number, and perhaps the title, but without the full citation (see below).

[edit] Shortened notes

When a separate reference section is included and full citations are listed there in alphabetical order, with the footnotes in a separate section entitled "Notes" or "Footnotes", then shortened notes may be used, giving the author(s), publication year, or perhaps the title, and the page numbers, in place of the full detail.

Example edit:

The Sun is pretty big,<ref>Miller 2005, p.23.</ref>
but the Moon is not so big.<ref>Brown 2006, p.46.</ref>
The Sun is also quite hot.<ref>Miller 2005, p.34.</ref>
== Notes ==
{{reflist|2}}
== References ==
*Brown, R (2006). "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78).
*Miller, E (2005). "The Sun", Academic Press.

Example rendered result:

The Sun is pretty big,[1] but the Moon is not so big.[2] The Sun is also quite hot.[3]

Notes

  1. ^ Miller 2005, p.23.
  2. ^ Brown 2006, p.46.
  3. ^ Miller 2005, p.34.

References

  • Brown, R (2006). "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78).
  • Miller, E (2005). "The Sun", Academic Press.

Shortened notes using titles rather than publication dates could look like this.

  1. ^ Miller "The Sun", p.23.
  2. ^ Brown "Size of the Moon", p.46.
  3. ^ Miller "The Sun", p.34.

In any case note that the full reference is only listed once, but can be cross-referred to multiple times from the shortened notes, for example for different page references.

[edit] Wikilinks to full references

Wikilinks can be created from short note citations to their matching references, thus allowing the reader to click on the shortened note and easily navigate to its appropriate full reference.

See the "Further considerations (Wikilinks to full references)" page for more details.

[edit] Clearer editing with shortened notes

Because footnotes work by placing the required content inside <ref> tags within the article text they necessarily break up the text to some degree when in edit mode. Article text can become difficult to read and maintain. In this respect well referenced articles can unfortunately suffer disproportionately in comparison to those not so well sourced. In any case the disruptive effect can kept to a minimum by using shortened notes.

See the "Example edits for different methods" page for some comparative examples using shortened notes and full length references in footnotes. These offer representations of edit mode views with examples of how they render to the reader.

[edit] Embedded links

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Embedded citations.

Web pages referenced in an article can be linked to directly by enclosing the URL in square brackets. For example, a reference to a newspaper article can be embedded like: [http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1601858,00.html], which looks like this: [1]

A full citation is also required in a References section at the end of the article.

*Plunkett, John. [http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1601858,00.html "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying"], ''The Guardian'', [[October 27]], [[2005]]. Accessed [[October 27]], [[2005]].

which appears as:

[edit] Citation templates

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Citation templates.

The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged. Templates may be used or removed at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with other editors on the article. Because templates can be contentious, editors should not change an article with a distinctive citation format to another without gaining consensus.

[edit] How to use them

There are (at least) two families of citation templates. The {{Citation}} template is intended to provide citations for many types of references. The other family has names of the form {{Cite xxx}} (for example, {{Cite book}} and {{Cite web}}). These two families produce different citation styles. For example, the {{Cite xxx}} family separates elements with a full stop, and gives page ranges as plain numbers, while the {{Citation}} template separates elements with a comma, and precedes page ranges with "pp." Thus, these two families should not be mixed in the same article.

The following construct using the {{Citation}} template produces a citation similar to the hand-formatted example citation in the Author-date referencing:How to write them subsection above:

* {{Citation |last=Ritter |first=R. |year=2002 |title=The Oxford Style Manual |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-860564-1}}

The {{Harv}} family of templates is available to produce author-date references in various formats with links matching the anchors produced by the {{Citation}} template. The following example constructs would produce references with different formatting styles having links matching the anchor produced by the example above:

Construct Result
{{harv|Ritter|2002}} (Ritter 2002)
{{harv|Ritter|2002|p=10}} (Ritter 2002, p. 10)
{{harv|Ritter|2002|pp=5-10}} (Ritter 2002, pp. 5-10)
{{harvnb|Ritter|2002|pp=5-10}} Ritter 2002, pp. 5-10
{{harvcol|Ritter|2002|pp=5-10}} (Ritter 2002:5-10)
{{harvcolnb|Ritter|2002|pp=5-10}} Ritter 2002:5-10
<ref>{{harvcolnb|Ritter|2002|pp=5-10}}</ref> places Ritter 2002:5-10 in a numbered footnote

It is possible to construct more exotic reference formats as well as to produce links with {{Harv}} family templates which match anchors produced by {{Cite xxx}} family templates (or any arbitrary anchor). The details are beyond the scope of this subsection, and can be found in the documentation of the individual templates.

[edit] Further reading/External links

An ==External links== or ==Further reading== or ==Bibliography== section is placed near the end of an article and offers books, articles, and links to websites related to the topic that might be of interest to the reader. The section "Further reading" may include both online material and material not available online. If all recommended material is online, the section may be titled "External links".

All items used as sources in the article must be listed in the "References" or "Notes" section, and are usually not included in "Further reading" or "External links". However, if an item used as a reference covers the topic beyond the scope of the article, and has significant usefulness beyond verification of the article, you may want to include it here as well. This also makes it easier for users to identify all the major recommended resources on a topic. The Wikipedia guideline for external links that are not used as sources can be found in Wikipedia:External links.

[edit] Convenience links

Further information: Wikipedia:Copyrights#Linking to copyrighted works

A "convenience link" is a link to source material on the Web posted by someone other than the original publisher or author. For example, a newspaper article no longer available on the newspaper's website may be hosted elsewhere. When offering convenience links, it is important to be reasonably certain that the convenience copy is a true copy of the original, without any changes or inappropriate commentary, and that it does not infringe the original publisher's copyright. Accuracy can be assumed when the hosting website appears reliable, but editors should always exercise caution, and ideally find and verify multiple copies of the material for contentious items.

Where several sites host a copy of the material, the site selected as the convenience link should be the one whose general content appears most in line with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:Verifiability.

[edit] Scrolling lists

Scrolling lists, for example of references, should never be used because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, it cannot be guaranteed that such lists will display properly in all web browsers.

[edit] Dealing with citation problems

[edit] Unsourced material

Main article: WP:PROVEIT

If an article has no references, and you are unable to find them yourself, you can tag the article with the template {{Unreferenced}}, so long as the article is not nonsensical or a WP:BLP, in which case request admin assistance. If a particular claim in an article lacks citation and is doubtful, consider placing {{fact}} after the sentence or removing it. Consider the following in deciding which action to take:

1. If a claim is doubtful but not harmful to the whole article or to Wikipedia, use the {{fact}} tag, but remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time.

2. If a claim is doubtful and harmful, you should remove it from the article; you may want to move it to the talk page and ask for a source, unless you regard it as very harmful or absurd, in which case it should not be posted to a talk page either. Use your common sense. All unsourced and poorly sourced contentious material about living persons should be removed from articles and talk pages immediately. It should not be tagged. See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and Wikipedia:Libel.

[edit] What to do when a reference link "goes dead"

Shortcut:
WP:DEADREF

When a link "goes dead" (see link rot and Wikipedia:Dead external links), it should be repaired or replaced, if possible. In most cases, one of the following approaches will give an acceptable alternative.

  • First, check the link to confirm that it is dead. If the link has returned to service but has been labeled as a dead link, simply remove the labeling. See Template:dead link.
  • Find a copy of the referenced document. There may be a copy of the referenced document in a web archiving service. If so, update the dead link to point to the copy of the referenced document.
  • Find a substitute for the referenced document. Enter key words or phrases or other content from the cited material into the referenced website's search engine, into a similar website's search engine, or into a general search engine such as Google. (A search engine may hold a cached version of the dead link for a short time, which can help find a substitute.) Or, browse the referenced document's website or similar websites. If you find a new document that can serve as a substitute, update the dead link to refer to the new document.
  • Deactivate the dead link, and keep the citation information if still appropriate to the article. (This may happen, for example, when an online copy of material that originally appeared in print is no longer online.) In the remaining citation, note that the dead link was found to be inactive on today's date. Even with an inactive link, the citation still records a source that was used, and provides a context for understanding archiving delays or for taking other actions. In order to deactivate the dead link, do one of the following.
    • Turn the dead link into plain text. Remove only enough of the dead link's wikitext or markup language or URI scheme (square brackets, "http://", and so on) so that clicking on the link does not take you to its destination. This will make the link visible to both readers and editors of the article.
    • Turn the dead link into an HTML comment. Place HTML comment markup language around the link. This will make the link disappear when reading the article, but will preserve the link for editors of the article.

If a dead link cannot be repaired or replaced, consider reworking the article section so that it no longer relies on the dead link.

Whether a dead link can or cannot be repaired or replaced, remember that Wikipedia policy (including policy on sources and biographies of living persons) still applies. Consider doing further edits of the citation and cited material, if appropriate, to improve the article.

To help prevent dead links, consider citing reference sources using a persistent identifier such as a digital object identifier, if available; or consider archiving the referenced document online when writing the article section, if permitted by copyright. Also, consider avoiding links to web pages that usually disappear after short periods of time, such as at some news sites.

[edit] Tools

[edit] Internet services

[edit] Citation creation tools

  • {{Cite book}} generator — Given an ISBN, output a citation which can be pasted into a Wikipedia article.
  • Template builder — Given an ISBN, a PubMed ID, etc., output a citation which can be pasted into a Wikipedia article.
  • DOI Bot - Completes partial references on a given page. References must either contain a DOI, or enough fields to be uniquely found.
  • Reference generator — generates wikicode for journals, webpages, and other commonly cited sources.
  • WPCITE - Firefox add-in for one-click creation of partial {{cite news}} information, in footnote format. See the developer's page for details.
  • refToolbar A Javascript gadget to add references directly into the edit page.

[edit] Citation processing tools

[edit] Programming tools

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "Caffeine" in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000.
  2. ^ Davis, Martin (2006), "The Church–Turing Thesis: Consensus and opposition". Proceedings, Computability in Europe 2006. Lecture notes in computer science, 3988 pp. 125–132.
  3. ^ The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed. 1993, Clause 15.8, p. 494 - "The superior numerals used for note reference numbers in the text should follow any punctuation marks except the dash, which they precede. The numbers should also be placed outside closing parentheses." - See also CMoS Online, Style Q&A, Punctuation.
  4. ^ Other style guides suggesting that superscript note reference numbers should generally be placed after punctuation include: Oxford/Hart's Rules, the MLA Style Manual, APA Style, Dictionary.com, IEEE style and Legal Blue Book Style (as well as the general exception for dashes, guides may variously make other exceptions for colons, semicolons and quotation marks).

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources"
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