Talk:Aaron Robinson (composer)

Questions

Dear Cindy ~ the sentence: " he orchestrated, arranged and conducted the musical Islands on Broadway at the New Victory Theater, with music and lyrics by Cindy Bullens.[citation needed] The musical was followed by a book by producer John Wulp.[6]" is a misleading correction and infers an incorrect statement. John Wulp wrote the "book" for the musical, which is what I had originally stated. The book is a libretto. A musical has music, lyrics and a book. The book that I reference is an autobiography about John Wulp that serves as a source citing for the statement in the preceeding sentence: "on- and off- Broadway." I would politely ask that you please know the subject statement you are correcting before cleaning up what you feel to be incorrect. Also, could you please explain why you keep removing the New Grove book on composers? it states over half of what you have requested citations for ... several reviewers have stated that these citations are excessive. I believe them. To ask for a citation for the Cindy Bullens statement is not making sense to me. It seems that everything that I write needs to be cited; which I cannot find similar practice in thousands of other articles on Wikipedia. If this were the case, then ever sentence on a subject would be followed by a number. Why are you doing this? Do you agree with this recent statement from a reviewer? "You are absolutely allowed to use offline sources for verification and in support of claims to notability. Per WP:SOURCEACCESS and WP:OFFLINE, there is no requirement that sources be available online - it's convenient, but not necessary. You can cite newspapers and magazines using variants of the {{citation}}: Empty citation (help) template; choose the appropriate one from this list." Impromp2Music (talk) 15:42, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

• I wanted to take some time to answer your questions and offer some clarification on some issues that have been identified with the article. Please note that I have no concern over the notability of Aaron Robinson and have no intention of requesting deletion of the article. Your work is appreciated. That said, after I came upon this article while patrolling new additions to the encyclopedia, I identified specific issues that needed to be addressed. These "maintenance templates" flagged the issues and directed readers to additional information for clarification on addressing and/or fixing these issues. Your response to me was to basically fix the issues or clean up the article myself. Yet, when I spend time providing said assistance, you balk at every turn, crying foul. I am more than willing to help, but hesitate when the response has been less than fruitful, appreciative, and filled with personal attacks on the work offered. Here's some clarification, point by point:

1. As far as I am aware, nobody is requiring online sourcing for this article. To do otherwise would be inappropriate. Offline sourcing is perfectly acceptable.
2. Regarding the statement "Robinson has performed on- and off- Broadway[citation needed]". You make this statement, but provide no additional information or citations for the statement. In what productions has he performed on-Broadway? Off-Broadway? Present this information, then show where you read this information.
3. Regarding the statement "he orchestrated, arranged and conducted the musical Islands on Broadway at the New Victory Theater, with music and lyrics by Cindy Bullens.[citation needed]" Great, looks like we have one on-Broadway production to support the previous statement. Now cite that source.
4. Regarding the statement "he orchestrated, arranged and conducted the musical Islands on Broadway at the New Victory Theater, with music and lyrics by Cindy Bullens.[citation needed]" Simply add a citation to support the statement "music and lyrics by Cindy Bullens".
5. The New Grove book source has not been removed. It is still there. If you need to use it as a citation in additional places, you are able to do so. Simply add it in the appropriate place following corresponding content and include the page number where the content may be found in the book. If you are unfamiliar with how to do this, please just ask me. Or you could even post the statements on this discussion page, followed by which site/page to use and I will format and add it to the article.
6. Other references were removed, because they did not meet the guidelines for reliability. The references removed include israbox.com, since it was a site that violated Wikipedia's copyright policies, in as such that it allowed website visitors to download copyrighted materials in violation of law. You can read more about the policy here: WP:ELNEVER. I removed an additional citation to greygardensnews.blogspot.com, since it was a self-published source and therefore considered unreliable per the guidelines found here: WP:BLOGS. While other sources are questionable, I consider them borderline. The opinions of others may vary in this regard. The borderline sources include the Wulp book, since it was self-published. However, I found it to be acceptable, since it was merely used to support the claim that Wulp wrote a book. It would not be reliable to support additional claims about other persons. Searchdictionaries.com appears to be an aggregate site and questionable, but I did not make a thorough review to determine reliability at the time. Other editors may weigh in with their recommendations regarding the reliability of the source.

Hope this helps. If you have more questions about this article, please feel free to ask. (I'm really not that scary!) Just make sure to present your concerns here on the discussion page, rather than on various pages throughout Wikipedia. Best regards, Cindy(talk to me) 09:28, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I've made some changes to the content in the article about the Islands musical. (First paragraph under "Career") I'm guessing after the fact that you were using the terms "book" and "script" interchangeably. I've also used sources multiple times to hopefully give you an example of how it is done. Take another look and see if it appears accurate. Cindy(talk to me) 09:59, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Cindy. I just wrote earlier below. The term "script" is only in reference to a film or play. A musical has a "book". An opera has a "libretto". Oscar Hammerstein wrote the "book" for Show Boat, Oklahoma, etc. While Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers wrote the "Music and Lyrics". It tends to be written as follows: Music and Lyrics by Richard Rodgers, Book by Oscar Hammerstein. I know you enjoy getting terms correct just as much as I do! (i.e. "reviewer") Hope this helps! Maybe you can help me out in understanding what "full citation needed" means? I'm thinking about joining and trying to write too. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.244.19.82 (talk) 19:06, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Just a suggestion ...

I see that you are having quite a lot of difficulty with your first article. It can be stressful to keep up with the knowledge and expertise of many editors on Wikipedia who have been doing this for much longer than we have: new comers. Hard as it may seem, emotions need to be set aside for now as they will not get you anywhere. The facts are these, you have submitted an article on a subject that is not well-known, although it has been approved by an reviewer. This being said, one must back nearly all statements with concrete facts and sources that cannot be questioned. Unlike other articles that are well-known: the capital of France is Paris. This is an on-going process. It's almost impossible to show others what you may have in your possession, such as a book, right in front of you that will serve as a reliable source. What you want to do is back up each statement with concrete, unchallengeable citations. If you have taken information from various sources that are not immediately accessible to those researching the subject online, you may want to rethink what you have included and allow others to add to, include, edit or cite sources for you. For example, you may know of Mr Robinson's recording from let's say: Amazon or iTunes or even a biography in a musical programme. You may even have recordings. But unless you can prove release dates, titles, etc, without question, it may not be necessary to include in this article at this time. Read the guidelines that will allow you to include what you want without any fear of editors requesting citations to back your statements. You may need to go back in and select carefully what you feel is important at present, knowing that the article is up and running, and there may be other out there that know more and have different (reliable) sources and will update the article to support your initial vision which lead you to create the article in the first place. Just remember: your article has been approved and it is up and running. Be happy for that, and take time to step back and re-assess what is now needed to go forward. Good luck! Music4ibc (talk) 17:32, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

• While encouragement is always welcome, we need to clarify your comments here to avoid confusion. We don't use Amazon or iTunes as citations. We don't link to online stores or websites which merely serve to promote sales of a product. All content needs to be verifiable. You can read about Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for verifiability and reliable sources at the wikilinks provided here. You may want to read a bit on what the "reviewer" role entails. Being "approved by a reviewer" simply means that the editor reviewing articles at AFC, determined that the article met the minimum guidelines to be moved to the mainspace. Others may actually question the decision to move it to the mainspace and/or the notability of the subject and opt to either delete it, request deletion, or edit and improve the article to ensure that it meets the criteria for inclusion. Note that while articles may meet the minimum criteria to be moved from WP:AFC, there may still be issues with the article, which require addressing. Other links that may offer guidance include WP:OWN and WP:COI (since it is clear there is a conflict of interest editing articles on behalf of Immanuel Baptist Church and their affiliates). If you have questions, please feel free to contact me. Cindy(talk to me) 07:05, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

album notes?

Hi Cindy. Would actual album notes or DVD notes help this person out with her article? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_album-notes and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_DVD-notes. I'm just trying to help out here. Maybe this will alleviate some of the citation pressures since the last editor attempted to link a citation to the albums themselves on Amazon. thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.71.28 (talk) 18:23, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• You can certainly add album notes, just like you added the other two. That said, we need better sources to support the existence of the albums than to merely add liner notes. It's kinda like saying, "The album/CD/DVD exists because it says so on the album/CD/DVD." For example, there is a sentence in the article that says, "He followed this recording with the Original Cast Recording of Treemonisha – In Concert in 1998." This claim is only supported by a citation to the liner notes. We need reliable and independent sources. You can read more at these links WP:VRS and WP:LINKSTOAVOID. Hope this helps. Cindy(talk to me) 18:49, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Ha! Ha! Cindy! You are right! Which came first? the CD or the Album Notes? I understand completely ASIN #'s on Amazon, but shouldn't the actual UPC codes, ISBNs, etc on the back of products be correct tracking for such items? I mean, it has to go through some process to be marketable right? What proves the existence of a book on Wikipedia? I'm confused between trying to prove existence and reliable sources. Are they different? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.244.19.82 (talk) 19:15, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
    • Yep, I'm just a silly girl at heart. ;) We're really not concerned with proving existence, per se. We're also not concerned with marketability. As an encyclopedia, we're not here to sell or market anything. We simply need to support claims with reliable sources. All claims have to be verified. The criteria for books or albums or whatever is the same... reliable and independent sources. You can read more about verifiability here: WP:V. And reliable sources here: WP:RS. As a side note, we don't generally use citations in the lead section, since that section serves to summarize the content in the body of the article itself. In essence, redundant citations may clutter the lead. For example, we don't need the first citation in the article to support that the subject "has composed and conducted premiere works for the concert and theatrical stage", since it summarizes content below (that requires supporting citations). That said, when lead sections make statements that are not in the body of the article (or make quotes), we need to cite this information. For example, the statement that the subject "can be seen in the PBS documentary On This Island", requires a citation. Two citations were offered, but do not actually support the claims. (Reference #4 doesn't even mention the subject.) Statements and claims regarding importance, significance, and notability of the subject may require many citations. Contentious or questionable material about living persons must be cited every time. You can read more about responding to challenged material here: WP:CHALLENGE. If you have questions, please feel free to ask. Cindy(talk to me) 20:09, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Great! Thank you! Very, very informative!!! Can you do something for me? When you put it in laymen's terms, it makes sense! Can you take a look at this page of so much information on a single musical subject and tell me how there are so little citations when there is just one reference? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Danielpour A bio to the Pittsburgh Symphony is submitted by the artists themselves, a direct affiliation, just like the prestigious Portland Opera with this subject. In addition, the bio submitted to G. Schirmer (although a "reputable" music company) simply prints what is submitted by the artist (composer). Now obviously the bio is impressive, but the article is in no way reliable in their sources. Without google searching or knowing anything about this subject (who is not a household name), why does this article stand up on its own? 2 bios and a artist website should not have allowed such a monumental article. Especially when this one is so detailed with citations needed. I don't want to make the same mistakes, but I'm not seeing what's different. If a publishing firm such as G Schirmer can serve as a single reference (not taking into consideration the accomplishments) just on writing an article, then if Black Nativity is published by Dramatist Plays (a reputable publishing firm) and simply states the composer's bio (the same that can be found in concert programs and on other websites, but is not admissable here, because it is a secondary source that is affiliated with the composer) why is one okay, but the other not? I don't want to make the same mistake this gal did with this article. I'm learning from her mistakes! Any incite would be helpful. Also, what about this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Bullens? found in this article. The references (although the subject can be found online with a Google search) do not support the content with reliable sources. If we are to write articles that stand on their own, how is this not full of 'citations needed' as well? Why were so many recordings, film score, compositions asked for citations with this article, when similar bios that were acceptable for Danielpour in format and stature allowed? Shouldn't there be citations after each of those? Simply because they are listed in a bio, doesn't prove reliability. Where is the fine line? Can editors simply (like law judges) kind of accept and allow what they feel is 'okay' or should every article rules be treated the same? Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.71.28 (talk) 23:31, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

The fact that other articles are crap does not mean this one should also strive to be just as bad. In fact this article is already far better than those two. The Cindy Bullens article already has a bunch of tags - look at the top of the page - and I've just tagged the Richard Danielpour article. Roger (talk) 07:20, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Reliable Sources to be included ...

I have taken a bit of time to reassess my contributions and original article submission from the helpful advice of the recent contributors and editors. Looking through the current article's citations I have compiled the following resources and references to be included by an experience editor who can use the information and hopefully relieve many of the citations presently inserted within the article.

• First Paragraph: "He has composed and conducted premiere works for the concert and theatrical stage;[1][full citation needed]"

1. First ~ the advice given by Cindamuse regarding first paragraphs states that perhaps the information given here is really not the best way to open the article. Perhaps the information given can be replaced in other areas following which may allow a blanket statement of who the subject is and what he is known for being.
2. In a previous edit, when the article was still being reviewed, there was a reference to a September 2001 New York Times article by Stephanie Sudekis about the musical Islands. It was removed by a young, inexperienced reviewer at the early stage ~ but since then such reliable sources have been allowed. The quote within the article regarding Mr Robinson is as follows: "Music Director and Conductor Aaron Robinson is no stranger to the theatrical stage, having conducted several world premieres for the concert hall including Leonard Bernstein's Candide, Scott Joplin's Treemonisha, and most recently Langston Hughes' Black Nativity." Later within the same article when talking about its creation, it is stated that " ... Mr Robinson, who also serves as conductor, provided the orchestrations for the production, along with the vocal arrangements ..." This should suffice for a reliable source in regards to: "In 2001, he orchestrated, arranged and conducted the musical Islands on Broadway at the New Victory Theater.[3][not in citation given]"

• In Playbill Magazine (September 2001 Issue) the statement reads as follows: Credits: "Music and Lyrics by Cindy Bullens, Book by John Wulp (producer), Scenic Design by Eric Hopkins, Orchestrations and Arrangements by Aaron Robinson." It also states performances dates and times and the theater in which it will play (which should suffice for "citation needed" for "In 2001, he orchestrated, arranged and conducted the musical Islands on Broadway at the New Victory Theater."

• Discography ~ I have been informed by Cindamuse that marketing sites such as Amazon promote sales and individual interests. However, the editor that included and formatted this section used Amazon as a research source since no other online site except Amazon contains this detailed information. I'm not saying remove it, I think it is a very professional look ~ but I am using this as an example that many of the citations under "compositions" need citations and yet the Discography information was allowed without contest. Incidentally, some of the information is incorrect. The label for "La Belle Epoque" should read: Music at Immanuel ~ and the disc label for "Treemonisha In Concert" should read "Take-a-Bough" productions. "IBC Black Nativity Chorus" (Orchestra) is incorrect as a singing ensemble is not comprised of instruments. It should read (Ensemble).

• Regarding the statement: "He followed this recording with the Original Cast Recording of Treemonisha – In Concert in 1998.[11][better source needed]" The article by Welker, David (cited previously in the first paragraph) discusses in length Robinson's contributions to the world of jazz and ragtime. It refers to the 1998 historic premiere concert in Rockport, Maine and the recording that followed on the Take-A-Bough label from the performance during its tour at St Luke's Cathedral in Portland Maine. It also states that the "New England Ragtime Suite" is his most well known ragtime work, concurring that the 2nd movement: "Bluet Rag" (comparing it to William Bolcom's Graceful Ghost Rag as being one of the most "... hauntingly beautiful rags written today ...")

• Television Appearances:

1. On This Island (PBS) [citation needed] ~ this episode has aired on PBS stations nationwide and lists in the scroll credits: "Aaron Robinson, Music Director / Conductor". Since there is no template to pinpoint a person specifically within a film, the template Wikipedia allows for episodes / films should meet the requirements for any further citations regarding this film and Mr Robinson.
2. The documentary film: Black Nativity - In Concert: A Gospel Celebration is a film documenting the creation, recording and concert performance of Robinson's "Black Nativity". He obviously can be seen in this film since it is his creation and the listing of this should be within the section. It is confusing that an editor placed this as a "Film Score" with a [citation needed] as Mr Robinson did not "write the score for this film." The liner notes for the DVD clearly states all that might be contested within this article.

• As for "Compositions" both Section and Listing. The works listed only represent a very small library of the works for the subject. I have yet to find a definitive reliable source (other than that of online bio's of the subject for productions ~ which I am told are not allowed) ~ so I will have to do more research in order to update and meet the rules and regulations for this section.

This being said, my plan is to go back in with definitive detailed information, supported by allowed templates on Wikipedia and its guidelines, for the above information. If there are comments before I do this, please leave them here. Thank you. Impromp2Music (talk) 15:24, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

• I'm afraid those simply are not reliable or independent sources that you've added to the article. Take a look at the guidelines for what constitutes a reliable source. Independent sources are exactly that... independent of the subject and affiliates. That said, the sources that you have added are not independent of the subject. And some of the sources you've provided do not support the article content. When providing a citation from published sources, we also need full citations. For example, dates, pages, name of publication, author, etc. The content needs to be verifiable. At this point, this article is really failing the guidelines all the way around. You've been given quite a bit of leeway in bringing this article up to standards, i.e., providing the necessary sources to verify content and establish notability, but we're not being left with much. The general option at this is to simply remove the unsourced content, taking it back to a stub, until such time as valid citations can be found and added to the article and expand it appropriately. Let me know your thoughts. Cindy(talk to me) 23:40, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Really? Well, then I'm stumped. I did read the links for reliable sources and verifiable content. I'm clearly missing something. NY Times is not reliable? When listing an episode, how could it be independent of the source? I looked at all the templates and common usage and examples Wikipedia has to offer. If you could use examples, real examples, rather than just placing a quick reason ("not a reliable source" - or - "not independent of the subject") as to why it isn't reliable, I think I might better understand. Any help you may offer is greatly appreciated. Thank you. Impromp2Music (talk) 16:06, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Cindy ~ I just pulled up a really wonderful articles on Christopher Isherwood and Lytton Strachey (2 authors), just to see what I may be doing wrong and although the subjects are dead, there are only 2 references (one of which is an autobiography "Christopher and His Kind" ... which I don't think is independent of the subject, but I could be wrong ...) on Isherwood and Strachey actually has no references at all. Please understand, I'm not pointing out another article for any errors, but to see how it is set up. Is my problem that I'm trying to meet "citation needed" with placing the information in a "reference" category? when perhaps they should be in a different category such as "notes"? I'm really confused. I am reading your links, but even Wikipedia supports many reliable sources such as NY Times. What would constitute "independent" for an article about a person? Every section in the Strachey "further reading" "external links" "notes" "bibliography" is about the subject. What am I missing? Out of the 18 ~ I'm thinking the only reference that might stay at this point is the New Grove book ~ and that everything else is considered "Original Research" (which is not allowed) and should be moved to other areas ... yes? no? I'd like to take just one more crack at it ... after your comments, and then I'll let you go in and clean house correctly. Is that okay? I do appreciate you "adopting" me.

This "subject" currently approved without any disclaimers or citations needed - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Morath is as close to my subject in the same genre and medium as is possible. Could you look this over and see why it works? There is a lot of information that if were in my article, there would be "citation needed" beside it ... I can't see where the references are independent of the subject or reliable sources. They are practically the same: living person, musician, composer, television, film, recordings, etc.

I'm also really having trouble citing recordings. Here is a link to an album: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_%28album%29 If someone can just list a recording on Wikipedia like this, why are mine not allowed within the article? Let's say I am trying to include a brief description of what the film "Black Nativity" is about. You said earlier that I cannot prove an existence of something by quoting liner notes. But there is clearly a template for videos, episodes, CD, DVDs ... and separate ones for what is contained in the liner notes. How would you, as an editor, actual prove that an album was created enough so that one could include content from the liner notes to better explain what the production or album is about? ? So that if I write: "In 2004, Mr. Robinson conducted Black Nativity - In Concert: A Gospel Celebration. The film Black Nativity – In Concert: A Gospel Celebration documents the recording of this album that recreates the original performance of Langston Hughes's Gospel Song-Play Black Nativity." Could you please tell me exactly what I would need to prove this statement reliable and verifiable.

Let's say I wanted to back-up the statement: "Ron Howard played "Opie" on the Andy Griffith Show." Without citing episodes, or IMDb, or anything that is not "independent of the subject", how does one actually cite this correctly if an editor placed a "citation needed"? Could you show me how? The actual reference in the "Ron Howard" Wikipedia article has: IMDb, biographies, Magazine articles, and even various statements heard on The Actors Studio. Notability aside, we all know Ron Howard and what he's done ... but to prove it, from an article standpoint, why are these allowed?

Take the living composer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Richmond ... are these references actually independent of the subject? once again, notability aside, forget that we know him, to write this article, what am I missing that allows these as "independent of the subject"?

You write: "When providing a citation from published sources, we also need full citations. For example, dates, pages, name of publication, author, etc." Am I not doing this correctly within my templates? I just went through again and found all the published sources, and I'm quite sure I'm putting all that in ... what more do I need?

Finally ~ could you please link me to an article on Wikipedia that is of a living subject and will show me exactly what is considered a "reliable source" that proves "verifiable" and is "independent of the the subject" ~ I think if I can see, I'll understand what you keep referring to ... THANKS! Impromp2Music (talk) 22:52, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Aaron. A lot of questions there to digest. In a nutshell, I really can't comment on the problems inherently existent in other articles. See WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS and WP:OSE. In essence, one bad article does not justify a second one. Note, that you keep mentioning articles in respect to "approval". We don't have such an "approval" process. While we have been working to address citation problems with this article, we now have style and format problems that you introduced in your last several edits. After you requested my help with this article, then I went in and brought this article into compliance, why would you then call it a mess and now revert the improvements to a condition that violates policies and guidelines, along with the Manual of Style? I have been working with you so that this article would not be deleted. However, it is clear that this has simply become a promotional piece. Creating a separate section entitled "Notes", then duplicating a source already listed in a "References" section does not even begin to address the citation issues with this article. The issues are not related to formatting, but to the lack of verifiable content established through reliable and independent sources. You ask for examples, but the links that I have directed you to provides specific examples and detailed explanations of the policies and guidelines. I am more than willing to help, but I find it puzzling that you are not able to read, understand, and follow this information.

As far as "full citations", citations are provided to show readers and researchers exactly where you found the source to write the article content. The content is required to be verifiable. Look at the citation you provided from the NYT. You fail to indicate the date on which this article was published. I have access to the archives on the NYT website, yet with the information that you have provided, I have looked through all articles written by Stephanie Sudekis and have found nothing. I even looked under different spellings of her name and came up empty. Same thing for the Portland Press Herald citation. As far as sourcing content regarding an episode, "independent" simply means that you use a published source that is not connected to the subject. Using a source that is about the subject is essential. "Independence" is shown if that source is not connected to the subject. You are attempting to establish that you recorded or accomplished various things in your life, simply through personal assertion. For example, that you recorded a specific album, using only the liner notes that says so. This is not even close to independent. An example of an independent source for much of the content in this article would be books, magazine articles, or newspaper articles. Reviews, rather than promotional content or advertisements. Publications by sources not connected to yourself, your church, choir members, professional manager, agent, recording studio, etc. We cannot establish notability, unless we have reliable and independent sources to verify the claims.

Let's take some of the issues one by one:

Specific citations

1. Not needed. We already have this information in "Published works" section.
2. This is a good source. Remove the "Notes" section.
3. We need issue date and page numbers.
4. We need issue date and URL to online copy (if available)
5. We need issue date and URL to online copy (if available)
6. Not a good source. This is a self-published book. (See WP:SPS policy about self-published sources, which states, "Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer."
7. While others have questioned this source, I have let this one go. In my opinion, it is borderline. Just be careful that you do not use it to support Wikipedia article content that cannot be verified through this citation. Note also that while I have let this source slide, others may voice another opinion, at which time, you will need to provide a better source.
8. Same answer for citation #7. Good source for Wulp and Bullens. Useless for anything about Robinson.
9. Good source for Lois Wright, but useless source for Robinson. It doesn't even mention you. Why would you try to say that it supports that you were responsible for writing the film score for that film?
10. Very poor source for Lois Wright and useless for Robinson. Not only does it fail to mention you, it doesn't even mention the film on which you say you wrote the film score. This is a useless source.
11. This is a good source. That said, using this source, I would add more content to provide some background on Black Nativity – In Concert: A Gospel Celebration.
12. We need issue date and page numbers.
13. We need issue date and page numbers.
14. This is not a citation, but simply repeating article content.
15. This is not a citation, but simply repeating article content.

General comments

1. The lead section no longer summarizes the article and needs to be expanded or rewritten.
2. Article uses poor grammar and sentence structure. Stop combining several sentences into one. See run-on sentence.
3. Stop referring to yourself as Mr. Robinson. Review the Manual of Style for biographies.
4. Place citations after punctuation. See WP:REFPUNC.
5. Remove or edit the comment about "most popular ragtime work". This is one person's point of view. For example, "His first album was Ragtime (re-released in 2011 under the title They All Played Ragtime), which features his "most popular ragtime work", "The New England Ragtime Suite". Change this to: "His first album, entitled, Ragtime, was re-released in 2011, under the title They All Played Ragtime. The album features "The New England Ragtime Suite", which, according to Dave Welker of Down East Magazine, is his "most popular ragtime work".[13] Italicize albums and place songs in quotes.
6. Remove hyphens and replace with en spaces in accordance with WP:HYPHEN.
7. Restore section headings in accordance with Wikipedia:MOS#Article titles, headings, and sections
8. Differentiate between film and television appearances.
9. Combine "Published works" and "Musical works". A discography is redundant with musical works, and a film score is a published work.
10. Remove "Television Documentary" from under "Musical works". No indication why it is there. It is also redundant with "Television and Film Appearances".
11. Under "External links", remove the links to 52composers, Portland Phoenix, Allen Organ, and Allmusic.
12. Remove the wikilink to "List of ragtime performers". Add it as a category or under a "See also" section.
13. You ask specifically how you would cite "In 2004, Mr. Robinson conducted Black Nativity - In Concert: A Gospel Celebration. The film Black Nativity – In Concert: A Gospel Celebration documents the recording of this album that recreates the original performance of Langston Hughes's Gospel Song-Play Black Nativity." Answer: You provide a reliable and independent source.
14. Outside of the Jeff Richmond article, all the articles you mention have citations that do not meet the requirements for reliable and independent sources. That said, why would you question the Richmond article? None of the sources written or published by the subject, his employer, or personal or professional affiliates. Nor were they used to promote the subject or his interests.

That's all for now. Cindy(talk to me) 16:41, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Clean-up

@cindamuse you obviously know what you are doing. just go in and make it right. clean-up what is needed. hopefully it can be started over and correctly edited from this time forward. 24.89.147.126 (talk) 15:10, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Link Rot Citation Tag

There is a more efficient and feasible use of tags referring to link rot and Bare URLs. The tag placed at the beginning of this article refers to inline citations and references within the article; which this article does not contain: Bare URLs for references and verifiable sources. External links are a separate section and do not reflect or provide reliable sources or verifiable resources within the article. A more viable and usable tool would be to place a tag at the beginning of the 'EXTERNAL LINKS' section. Placing a Bare URLs inline citation tag at the beginning of the article promotes newcomers to fiddle with what is already correct within the reference section. A simple solution is to remove the overall tag and place a more descriptive, appropriate and helpful tag at the beginning of the external link section.

Impromp2Music (talk) 13:40, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

This might help in how to place tags correctly and helpfully: WP:TMC

Music4ibc (talk) 18:49, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

• Restored the unaddressed maintenance tag. Maintenance to provide inline citations, i.e., footnotes, is not the same as removing bare URLs in order to allow for verifiability of the article's content. There are actually bare URLS in this article, which often lead to link rot. External links equate to sources, albeit, they are not footnotes and do not always support the article's content. Cindy(need help?) 02:05, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

... you're still here? good gracious lady, you really need to get a life, you know that? :-) I find no redeeming qualities in any of those who do the following:

Avoid tagging articles if you can easily fix the problem. The goal is an improved article, not a tagged article. Avoid "drive-by" tagging: tags should be accompanied by a comment on the article's talk page explaining the problem and beginning a discussion on how to fix it, or, for simpler problems, a remark using the reason parameter as shown below

To me, it's a sad reflection on a meaningless power play on someone else's work. But that's my opinion: I'm free to have one, last I checked. It doesn't matter, because in the end, the accomplishments of the subject in the article will outlast any edits, revisions, tags, or removals made by a Wikipedia contributor.

Music4ibc (talk) 15:08, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I must agree in some form with the complaint regarding drive-by tags without the courtesy perhaps of fixing the problem themselves. Which in this case seems to be quite easily fixable. My question is the links to which this tag refers. I clicked on Webreflinks and was told: Applying English Wikipedia commonfixes No changes necessary: references template found. No changes were necessary in Aaron Robinson (composer) Then I clicked on the link to templates and could find no direct link to bare URLs in sections titled: External Links. Only line citations, and general references, etc. Then I took nearly an hour and search other similar articles and found dozen upon dozens external links that simply had bare URLs. In fact, I would dare say, there are countless bare URLs in external link section on Wikipedia. I must ask: if neither the original poster and the one who reinstated the tag are not arguing about the reference section, which I also believe the tag refers to in a more direct manner than a whole article inclusion for the tag, and most are found within the external links section, what would it hurt for the ones who find it a problem to simply take the time and enter in the information via the given templates from the links that are there now, or simply place a tag at the beginning of the section? Reading much of the involvement of two particular posters for this article I find that there may be a personal agenda and overly heightened interest in monitoring this article to the point that it may be a conflict of interest for both. To a user of Wikipedia, it always places doubt in my mind when I see articles with tags. To those who place them there I understand they want a better article and a more reliable Wikipedia, but sometimes they lose sight as to how those tags are perceived. Simple resolution? do the work. Whenever I see someone do a "drive-by" tagging, I look at their editing history, and find that more often than not, this is all they do. In researching

For information on referencing citations in Wikipedia articles, see Help:Footnotes and Wikipedia:Inline citation. For information about citing Wikipedia articles for use in work outside of Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia.

"WP:CITE" and "WP:REF" redirect here. For the Citation Needed information page, see WP:CITENEED. For the reference desk, see WP:REFD.

"WP:CS" redirects here. For the policy on clean start, see Wikipedia:Clean start. For the computer science WikiProject, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science.

A citation, or reference, uniquely identifies a source of information, e.g.:

Ritter, R. M. (2003). The Oxford Style Manual. Oxford University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-19-860564-5.

Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations, anywhere in article space.

A citation or reference in an article usually has two parts. In the first part, each section of text that is either based on, or quoted from, an outside source is marked as such with an inline citation. This is usually displayed as a superscript footnote number: The second necessary part of the citation or reference is the list of full references, which provides complete, formatted detail about the source, so that anyone reading the article can find it and verify it.

This page explains how to place and format both parts of the citation. Each article should use one citation method or style throughout. If an article already has citations, preserve consistency by using that method or seek consensus on the talk page before changing it (the principle is reviewed at § Variation in citation methods). While you should try to write citations correctly, what matters most is that you provide enough information to identify the source. Others will improve the formatting if needed. See: "Help:Referencing for beginners", for a brief introduction on how to put references in Wikipedia articles; and cite templates in Visual Editor, about a graphical way for citation, included in Wikipedia.

Citation types

• An inline citation means any citation added close to the material it supports, for example after the sentence or paragraph, normally in the form of a footnote.
• In-text attribution involves adding the source of a statement to the article text, such as Rawls argues that X.^[5] This is done whenever a writer or speaker should be credited, such as with quotations, close paraphrasing, or statements of opinion or uncertain fact. The in-text attribution does not give full details of the source – this is done in a footnote in the normal way. See In-text attribution below.
• A general reference is a citation that supports content, but is not linked to any particular piece of material in the article through an inline citation. General references are usually listed at the end of the article in a References section. They are usually found in underdeveloped articles, especially when all article content is supported by a single source. They may also be listed in more developed articles as a supplement to inline citations.

Short and full citations

Main page: Help:Shortened footnotes

• A full citation fully identifies a reliable source and, where applicable, the place in that source (such as a page number) where the information in question can be found. For example: Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 1. This type of citation is usually given as a footnote, and is the most commonly used citation method in Wikipedia articles.
• A short citation is an inline citation that identifies the place in a source where specific information can be found, but without giving full details of the source. Some Wikipedia articles use it, giving summary information about the source together with a page number. For example, <ref>Rawls 1971, p. 1.</ref>, which renders as Rawls 1971, p. 1.. These are used together with full citations, which are listed in a separate "References" section or provided in an earlier footnote.

Forms of short citations used include author-date referencing (APA style, Harvard style, or Chicago style), and author-title or author-page referencing (MLA style or Chicago style). As before, the list of footnotes is automatically generated in a "Notes" or "Footnotes" section, which immediately precedes the "References" section containing the full citations to the source. Short citations can be written manually, or by using either the {{sfn}} or {{harvnb}} templates or the {{r}} referencing template. (Note that templates should not be added without consensus to an article that already uses a consistent referencing style.) The short citations and full citations may be linked so that the reader can click on the short note to find full information about the source. See the template documentation for details and solutions to common problems. For variations with and without templates, see wikilinks to full references. For a set of realistic examples, see these.

This is how short citations look in the edit box:

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}}

== References ==
* Brown, Rebecca (2006). "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 51 (78).
* Miller, Edward (2005). ''The Sun''. Academic Press.

This is how they look in the article:

The Sun is pretty big, but the Moon is not so big. The Sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

References

---

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

Shortened notes using titles rather than publication dates would look like this in the article:

Notes

---

When using manual links it is easy to introduce errors such as duplicate anchors and unused references. The script User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors will show many related errors. Duplicate anchors may be found by using the W3C Markup Validation Service.

When and why to cite sources

Further information: Wikipedia:When to cite

By citing sources for Wikipedia content you enable users to verify that the cited information is supported by reliable sources – improving the credibility of Wikipedia while showing that the content is not original research. You also help users find additional information on the subject; and by giving attribution you avoid plagiarising the source of your words or ideas.

In particular, sources are needed for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. If reliable sources cannot be found for challenged material, it is likely to be removed from the article. Sources are also required when quoting someone, with or without quotation marks, or closely paraphrasing a source. But the need to cite sources is not limited to those situations: editors are always encouraged to add or improve citations for any information in an article.

Citations are especially desirable for statements about living persons, particularly when the statements are contentious or potentially defamatory. In accordance with the biography of living persons policy, unsourced information of this type is likely to be removed on sight.

Multimedia

For an image or other media file, details of its origin and copyright status should appear on its file page. Image captions should be referenced as appropriate just like any other part of the article. A citation is not needed for descriptions such as alt text that are verifiable directly from the image itself, or for text that merely identifies a source (e.g., the caption "Belshazzar's Feast (1635)" for File:Rembrandt-Belsazar.jpg).

When not to cite

Further information: Wikipedia:When to cite § When a source or citation may not be needed

Citations are not used on disambiguation pages (sourcing for the information given there should be done in the target articles). Citations are often omitted from the lead section of an article, insofar as the lead summarizes information for which sources are given later in the article, although quotations and controversial statements, particularly if about living persons, should be supported by citations even in the lead. See WP:LEADCITE for more information.

Consecutive cites of the same source

Per WP:PAIC, citations should be placed at the end of the text that they support. Material that is repeated multiple times in a paragraph does not require an inline citation for every mention. If you say an elephant is a mammal more than once, provide one only at the first instance. Avoid cluttering text with redundant citations like this:

Elephants are large land mammals ... Elephants' teeth are very different from those of most other mammals. Unlike most mammals, which grow baby teeth and then replace them with a permanent set of adult teeth, elephants have cycles of tooth rotation throughout their entire lives.

This does not apply to lists or tables, nor does it apply when multiple sources support different parts of a paragraph or passage. Citation requirements for WP:DYK may require a citation to be inserted (for the duration of the DYK listing) even within a passage completely cited to the same sources.

Inline citations

Further information: Wikipedia:Inline citation

Inline citations allow the reader to associate a given piece of material in an article with the specific reliable source(s) that support it. Inline citations are added using footnotes, long or short.

How to place an inline citation using ref tags

Further information: Footnotes: the basics

To create a footnote, use the <ref>...</ref> syntax at the appropriate place in the article text, for example:

• Justice is a human invention.<ref>Rawls, John. ''A Theory of Justice''. Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 1.</ref> It ...

which will be displayed as something like:

• Justice is a human invention. It ...

It will also be necessary to generate the list of footnotes (where the citation text is actually displayed); for this, see the previous section.

As in the above example, citation markers are normally placed after adjacent punctuation such as periods (full stops) and commas. For exceptions, see the WP:Manual of Style § Punctuation and footnotes. Note also that no space is added before the citation marker. Citations should not be placed within, or on the same line as, section headings.

The citation should be added close to the material it supports, offering text–source integrity. If a word or phrase is particularly contentious, an inline citation may be added next to that word or phrase within the sentence, but it is usually sufficient to add the citation to the end of the clause, sentence, or paragraph, so long as it's clear which source supports which part of the text.

Avoiding clutter

Inline references can significantly bloat the wikitext in the edit window and can become confusing and difficult to manage. There are two main methods to avoid clutter in the edit window:

• Using list-defined references by collecting the full citation code within the reference list template {{reflist}}, and then inserting them in the text with a shortened reference tag, for example <ref name="Smith 2001, p99" />.
• Inserting short citations (see below) that then refer to a full list of source texts

As with other citation formats, articles should not undergo large-scale conversion between formats without consensus to do so.

Note, however, that references defined in the reference list template can no longer be edited with the VisualEditor.

Repeated citations

Further information: Footnotes: using a source more than once

For multiple use of the same inline citation or footnote, you can use the named references feature, choosing a name to identify the inline citation, and typing <ref name="name">text of the citation</ref>. Thereafter, the same named reference may be reused any number of times either before or after the defining use by typing the previous reference name, like this: <ref name="name" />. The use of the slash before the > means that the tag is self-closing, and the </ref> used to close other references must not be used in addition.

The text of the name can be almost anything‍—‌apart from being completely numeric. If spaces are used in the text of the name, the text must be placed within double quotes. Placing all named references within double quotes may be helpful to future editors who do not know that rule. To help with page maintenance, it is recommended that the text of the name have a connection to the inline citation or footnote, for example "author year page": <ref name="Smith 2005 p94">text of the citation</ref>.

Use straight quotation marks " to enclose the reference name. Do not use curly quotation marks “”. Curly marks are treated as another character, not as delimiters. The page will display an error if one style of quotation marks is used when first naming the reference, and the other style is used in a repeated reference, or if a mix of styles is used in the repeated references.

Citing multiple pages of the same source

Further information: Help:References and page numbers

When an article cites many different pages from the same source, to avoid the redundancy of many big, nearly identical full citations, most Wikipedia editors use one of these options:

• Named references in conjunction with a combined list of page numbers using the |pages= parameter of the {{cite xxx}} templates (can become confusing for large number of pages)
• Named references in conjunction with the {{rp}} or {{r}} templates to specify the page
• Short citations

The use of ibid., id., or similar abbreviations is discouraged, as they may become broken as new references are added (op. cit. is less problematic in that it should refer explicitly to a citation contained in the article; however, not all readers are familiar with the meaning of the terms). If the use of ibid is extensive, tag the article using the {{ibid}} template.

What information to include

Listed below is the information that a typical inline citation or general reference will provide, though other details may be added as necessary. This information is included in order to identify the source, assist readers in finding it, and (in the case of inline citations) indicate the place in the source where the information is to be found. (If an article uses short citations, then the inline citations will refer to this information in abbreviated form, as described in the relevant sections above.)

In general, the citation information should be cited as it appears in the original source. For example, the album notes from Hurts 2B Human should not be cited as being from the album Hurts to be Human, or an X (formerly Twitter) user named "i😍dogs" should not be cited as "i[love]dogs". Retain the original special glyphs and spelling.

Use details in citing. Citations 1–3 are good, while citations 4–6 should be improved.

Examples

Books

See also the template {{cite book}}.

Citations for books typically include:

• name of author(s)
• title of book
• volume when appropriate
• name of publisher
• place of publication
• date of publication of the edition
• chapter or page numbers cited, if appropriate
• edition, if not the first edition
• ISBN (optional)

Some edited books have individually authored chapters. Citations for these chapters are recommended. They typically include:

• name of author(s)
• title of the chapter
• name of book's editor
• name of book and other details as above
• chapter number or page numbers for the chapter (optional)

In some instances, the verso of a book's title page may record, "Reprinted with corrections XXXX" or similar, where "XXXX" is a year. This is a different version of a book in the same way that different editions are different versions. Note this in your citation. See § Dates and reprints for further information.

Journal articles

See also the template {{cite journal}}.

Citations for journal articles typically include:

• name of the author(s)
• year and sometimes month of publication
• title of the article
• name of the journal
• volume number, issue number, and page numbers (article numbers in some electronic journals)
• DOI and/or other identifiers are optional and can often be used in place of a less stable URL (although URLs may also be listed in a journal citation)

Newspaper articles

See also the template {{cite news}}.

Citations for newspaper articles typically include:

• byline (author's name), if any
• title of the article
• name of the newspaper in italics
• city of publication (if not included in name of newspaper)
• date of publication
• page number(s) are optional and may be substituted with negative number(s) on microfilm reels

Web pages

See also the template {{cite web}}.

Citations for World Wide Web pages typically include:

• URL of the specific web page where the referenced content can be found
• name of the author(s)
• title of the article
• title or domain name of the website
• publisher, if known
• date of publication
• page number(s) (if applicable)
• the date you retrieved (or accessed) the web page (required if the publication date is unknown)

Sound recordings

Further information: Help:References and page numbers § Other in-source locations

Citations for sound recordings typically include:

• name of the composer(s), songwriter(s), script writer(s) or the like
• name of the performer(s)
• title of the song or individual track
• title of the album (if applicable)
• name of the record label
• year of release
• medium (for example: LP, audio cassette, CD, MP3 file)
• approximate time at which event or point of interest occurs, where appropriate

Do not cite an entire body of work by one performer. Instead, make one citation for each work your text relies on.

Film, television, or video recordings

See also the template {{cite AV media}}.

Citations for films, TV episodes, or video recordings typically include:

• name of the director
• name of the producer, if relevant
• names of major performers
• the title of a TV episode
• title of the film or TV series
• name of the studio
• year of release
• medium (for example: film, videocassette, DVD)
• approximate time at which event or point of interest occurs, where appropriate

Wikidata

See also the template {{cite Q}}.

Wikidata is largely user-generated, and articles should not directly cite Wikidata as a source (just as it would be inappropriate to cite other Wikipedias' articles as sources).

But Wikidata's statements can be directly transcluded into articles; this is usually done to provide external links or infobox data. For example, more than two million external links from Wikidata are shown through the {{Authority control}} template. There has been controversy over the use of Wikidata in the English Wikipedia due to vandalism and its own sourcing. While there is no consensus on whether information from Wikidata should be used at all, there is general agreement that any Wikidata statements that are transcluded need to be just as – or more – reliable compared to Wikipedia content. As such, Module:WikidataIB and some related modules and templates filter Wikidata statements not supported by a reference by default; however, other modules and templates, such as Module:Wikidata, do not.

To transclude an item from Wikidata, the QID (Q number) of an item in Wikidata needs to be known. QID can by found by searching for an item by the name or DOI in Wikidata. A book, a journal article, a musical recording, sheet music or any other item can be represented by a structured item in Wikidata.

The {{Cite Q}} template can be used to cite works whose metadata is held in Wikidata, provided the cited work meets Wikipedia's standards. As of December 2020, {{Cite Q}} does not support "last, first" or Vancouver-style author name lists, so it should not be used in articles in which "last, first" or Vancouver-style author names are the dominant citation style.

Other

See also:

• {{cite album notes}}
• {{cite comic}}
• {{cite conference}} for conference reports or papers
• {{cite court}} for court cases or legal decisions
• {{cite act}} for a law or legal act
• {{cite encyclopedia}}
• {{cite episode}} for TV or radio series
• {{cite mailing list}}
• {{cite map}}
• {{cite newsgroup}}
• {{cite patent}} for patents
• {{cite press release}}
• {{cite report}}
• {{cite thesis}}
• {{cite video game}}

Identifying parts of a source

Further information: Help:References and page numbers

When citing lengthy sources, you should identify which part of a source is being cited.

Books and print articles

Specify the page number or range of page numbers. Page numbers are not required for a reference to the book or article as a whole. When you specify a page number, it is helpful to specify the version (date and edition for books) of the source because the layout, pagination, length, etc. can change between editions.

If there are no page numbers, whether in ebooks or print materials, then you can use other means of identifying the relevant section of a lengthy work, such as the chapter number, the section title, or the specific entry.

In some works, such as plays and ancient works, there are standard methods of referring to sections, such as "Act 1, scene 2" for plays and Bekker numbers for Aristotle's works. Use these methods whenever appropriate.

Audio and video sources

Specify the time at which the event or other point of interest occurs. Be as precise as possible about the version of the source that you are citing; for example, movies are often released in different editions or "cuts". Due to variations between formats and playback equipment, precision may not be accurate in some cases. However, many government agencies do not publish minutes and transcripts but do post video of official meetings online; generally the subcontractors who handle audio-visual are quite precise.

Links and ID numbers

A citation ideally includes a link or ID number to help editors locate the source. If you have a URL (web page) link, you can add it to the title part of the citation, so that when you add the citation to Wikipedia the URL becomes hidden and the title becomes clickable. To do this, enclose the URL and the title in square brackets—the URL first, then a space, then the title. For example:

''[https://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol66/mono66-7.pdf IARC Monographs On The Evaluation Of Carcinogenic Risks To Humans – Doxefazepam]''. International Agency For Research On Cancer (IARC). 66: 97–104. 13–20 February 1996.

For web-only sources with no publication date, the "Retrieved" date (or the date you accessed the web page) should be included, in case the web page changes in the future. For example: Retrieved 15 July 2011 or you can use the access-date parameter in the automatic Wikipedia:refToolbar 2.0 editing window feature.

You can also add an ID number to the end of a citation. The ID number might be an ISBN for a book, a DOI (digital object identifier) for an article or some e-books, or any of several ID numbers that are specific to particular article databases, such as a PMID number for articles on PubMed. It may be possible to format these so that they are automatically activated and become clickable when added to Wikipedia, for example by typing ISBN (or PMID) followed by a space and the ID number.

If your source is not available online, it should be available in reputable libraries, archives, or collections. If a citation without an external link is challenged as unavailable, any of the following is sufficient to show the material to be reasonably available (though not necessarily reliable): providing an ISBN or OCLC number; linking to an established Wikipedia article about the source (the work, its author, or its publisher); or directly quoting the material on the talk page, briefly and in context.

Linking to pages in PDF files

Links to long PDF documents can be made more convenient by taking readers to a specific page with the addition of #page=n to the document URL, where n is the page number. For example, using https://www.domain.com/document.pdf#page=5 as the citation URL displays page five of the document in any PDF viewer that supports this feature. If the viewer or browser does not support it, it will display the first page instead.

Linking to Google Books pages

Further information: Wikipedia:Google Books and Wikipedia

Google Books sometimes allows numbered book pages to be linked to directly. Page links should only be added when the book is available for preview; they will not work with snippet view. Keep in mind that availability varies by location. No editor is required to add page links, but if another editor adds them, they should not be removed without cause; see the October 2010 RfC for further information.

These can be added in several ways (with and without citation templates):

• Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 18.
• Or with a template: Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. p. 18.
• Rawls 1971, p. 18.
• Rawls 1971, p. 18.
• Rawls 1971, p. 18.
• Rawls 1971, 18.

In edit mode, the URL for p. 18 of A Theory of Justice can be entered like this using the {{Cite book}} template:

{{cite book |last=Rawls |first=John |date=1971 |title=A Theory of Justice |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kvpby7HtAe0C&pg=PA18 |publisher=Harvard University Press |page=18}}

or like this, in the first of the above examples, formatted manually:

Rawls, John. [https://books.google.com/books?id=kvpby7HtAe0C&pg=PA18 ''A Theory of Justice'']. Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 18.

When the page number is a Roman numeral, commonly seen at the beginning of books, the URL looks like this for page xvii (Roman numeral 17) of the same book:

     https://books.google.com/books?id=kvpby7HtAe0C&pg=PR17

The &pg=PR17 indicates "page, Roman, 17", in contrast to the &pg=PA18, "page, Arabic, 18" the URL given earlier.

You can also link to a tipped-in page, such as an unnumbered page of images between two regular pages. (If the page contains an image that is protected by copyright, it will be replaced by a tiny notice saying "copyrighted image".) The URL for eleventh tipped-in page inserted after page 304 of The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, looks like this:

     https://books.google.com/books?id=dBs4CO1DsF4C&pg=PA304-IA11

The &pg=PA304-IA11 can be interpreted as "page, Arabic, 304; inserted after: 11".

Note that some templates properly support links only in parameters specifically designed to hold URLs like |url= and |archive-url= and that placing links in other parameters may not link properly or will cause mangled COinS metadata output. However, the |page= and |pages= parameters of all Citation Style 1/Citation Style 2 citation templates, the family of {{sfn}}- and {{harv}}-style templates, as well as {{r}}, {{rp}} and {{ran}} are designed to be safe in this regard as well.

Citer may be helpful.

Users may also link the quotation on Google Books to individual titles, via a short permalink which ends with their related ISBN, OCLC or LCCN numerical code, e.g.: https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0521349931, a permalink to the Google book with the ISBN code 0521349931. For further details, you may see How-to explanation on support.google.com.

Say where you read it

"Say where you read it" follows the practice in academic writing of citing sources directly only if you have read the source yourself. If your knowledge of the source is secondhand—that is, if you have read Jones (2010), who cited Smith (2009), and you want to use what Smith (2009) said—make clear that your knowledge of Smith is based on your reading of Jones.

When citing the source, write the following (this formatting is just an example):

John Smith (2009). Name of Book I Haven't Seen, Cambridge University Press, p. 99, cited in Paul Jones (2010). Name of Encyclopedia I Have Seen, Oxford University Press, p. 29.

Or if you are using short citations:

Smith (2009), p. 99, cited in Jones (2010), p. 29.

The same principle applies when indicating the source of images and other media files in an article.

Note: The advice to "say where you read it" does not mean that you have to give credit to any search engines, websites, libraries, library catalogs, archives, subscription services, bibliographies, or other sources that led you to Smith's book. If you have read a book or article yourself, that's all you have to cite. You do not have to specify how you obtained and read it.

So long as you are confident that you read a true and accurate copy, it does not matter whether you read the material using an online service like Google Books; using preview options at a bookseller's website like Amazon; through your library; via online paid databases of scanned publications, such as JSTOR; using reading machines; on an e-reader (except to the extent that this affects page numbering); or any other method.

Dates and reprints

Date a book that is identically reprinted or printed-on-demand to the first date in which the edition became available. For example, if an edition of a book was first released in 2005 with an identical reprinting in 2007, date it to 2005. If substantive changes were made in a reprint, sometimes marked on the verso with "Reprinted with corrections", note the edition and append the corrected reprint year to it (e.g. "1st ed. reprinted with corrections 2005").

Editors should be aware that older sources (especially those in the public domain) are sometimes republished with modern publication dates; treat these as new publications. When this occurs and the citation style being used requires it, cite both the new and original publication dates, e.g.:

• Darwin, Charles (1964) [1859]. On the Origin of Species (facsimile of 1st ed.). Harvard University Press.

This is done automatically in the {{citation}} and {{cite book}} templates when you use the |orig-date= parameter.

Alternately, information about the reprint can be appended as a textual note:

• Boole, George (1854). An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which Are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities. Macmillan. Reprinted with corrections, Dover Publications, New York, NY, 1958.

Seasonal publication dates and differing calendar systems

Publication dates, for both older and recent sources, should be written with the goal of helping the reader find the publication and, once found, confirm that the correct publication has been located. For example, if the publication date bears a date in the Julian calendar, it should not be converted to the Gregorian calendar.

If the publication date was given as a season or holiday, such as "Winter" or "Christmas" of a particular year or two-year span, it should not be converted to a month or date, such as July–August or December 25. If a publication provided both seasonal and specific dates, prefer the specific one.

Additional annotation

In most cases it is sufficient for a citation footnote simply to identify the source (as described in the sections above); readers can then consult the source to see how it supports the information in the article. Sometimes, however, it is useful to include additional annotation in the footnote, for example to indicate precisely which information the source is supporting (particularly when a single footnote lists more than one source – see § Bundling citations and § Text–source integrity, below).

A footnote may also contain a relevant quotation from the source. This is especially helpful when the cited text is long or dense. A quotation allows readers to immediately identify the applicable portion of the reference. Quotes are also useful if the source is not easily accessible. However, caution should be exercised, as always, to avoid copyright violations.

In the case of non-English sources, it may be helpful to quote from the original text and then give an English translation. If the article itself contains a translation of a quote from such a source (without the original), then the original should be included in the footnote. (See the WP:Verifiability § Non-English sources policy for more information.)

Notes and references section

Main page: WP:Manual of Style/Layout § Notes and references

See also: Help:Footnotes and WP:Manual of Style/Layout § Standard appendices and footers

This section describes how to add footnotes and also describes how to create a list of full bibliography citations to support shortened footnotes.

The first editor to add footnotes to an article must create a dedicated citations section where they are to appear. Any reasonable name may be chosen. The most frequent choice is "References". Other options in diminishing order of popularity are, "Notes", "Footnotes", or "Works cited", although these are more often used to distinguish between multiple end-matter sections or subsections.

For an example of headings of a notes section, see the article Tezcatlipoca.

General references

A general reference is a citation to a reliable source that supports content, but is not linked to any particular text in the article through an inline citation. General references are usually listed at the end of the article in a "References" section, and are usually sorted by the last name of the author or the editor. General reference sections are most likely to be found in underdeveloped articles, especially when all article content is supported by a single source. The disadvantage of general references is that text–source integrity is lost, unless the article is very short. They are frequently reworked by later editors into inline citations.

The appearance of a general references section is the same as those given above in the sections on short citations and parenthetical references. If both cited and uncited references exist, their distinction can be highlighted with separate section names, e.g., "References" and "General references".

How to create the list of citations

With some exceptions discussed below, citations appear in a single section containing only the <references /> tag or the {{Reflist}} template. For example:

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

or

== References ==
<references />

The footnotes will then automatically be listed under that section heading. Each numbered footnote marker in the text is a clickable link to the corresponding footnote, and each footnote contains a caret that links back to the corresponding point in the text.

Scrolling lists, or lists of citations appearing within a scroll box, should never be used. This is because of issues with readability, browser compatibility, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring.

If an article contains a list of general references, this is usually placed in a separate section, titled, for example, "References". This usually comes immediately after the section(s) listing footnotes, if any. (If the general references section is called "References", then the citations section is usually called "Notes".)

Separating citations from explanatory footnotes

See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout § Notes and references, and Help:Explanatory notes

If an article contains both footnoted citations and other (explanatory) footnotes, then it is possible (but not necessary) to divide them into two separate lists using footnotes groups. The explanatory footnotes and the citations are then placed in separate sections, called (for example) "Notes" and "References", respectively.

Another method of separating explanatory footnotes from footnoted references is using {{efn}} for the explanatory footnotes. The advantage of this system is that the content of an explanatory footnote can in this case be referenced with a footnoted citation. When explanatory footnotes and footnoted references are not in separate lists, {{refn}} can be used for explanatory footnotes containing footnoted citations.

Duplicate citations

Combine precisely duplicated full citations, in keeping with the existing citation style (if any). In this context "precisely duplicated" means having the same content, not necessarily identical strings ("The New York Times" is the same as "NY Times"; different access-dates are not significant). Do not discourage editors, particularly inexperienced ones, from adding duplicate citations when the use of the source is appropriate, because a duplicate is better than no citation. But any editor should feel free to combine them, and doing so is the best practice on Wikipedia.

Citations to different pages or parts of the same source can also be combined (preserving the distinct parts of the citations), as described in Help:References and page numbers. Any method that is consistent with the existing citation style (if any) may be used, or consensus can be sought to change the existing style. Some tools are listed at Help:Citation tools § Duplicate reference finders.

Citation style

While citations should aim to provide the information listed above, Wikipedia does not have a single house style, though citations within any given article should follow a consistent style. A number of citation styles exist, including those described in the Wikipedia articles for Citation, APA style, ASA style, MLA style, The Chicago Manual of Style, Author-date referencing, the Vancouver system and Bluebook.

Although nearly any consistent style may be used, avoid all-numeric date formats other than YYYY-MM-DD, because of the ambiguity concerning which number is the month and which the day. For example, 2002-06-11 may be used, but not 11/06/2002. The YYYY-MM-DD format should in any case be limited to Gregorian calendar dates where the year is after 1582. Because it could easily be confused with a range of years, the format YYYY-MM (for example: 2002-06) is not used.

For more information on the capitalization of cited works, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § All caps and small caps.

Variation in citation methods

Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style, merely on the grounds of personal preference or to make it match other articles, without first seeking consensus for the change.

As with spelling differences, it is normal practice to defer to the style used by the first major contributor or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page, unless a change in consensus has been achieved. If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it; if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. If you are the first contributor to add citations to an article, you may choose whichever style you think best for the article. However, since 5 September 2020, inline parenthetical referencing is a deprecated citation style on English-language Wikipedia.

If all or most of the citations in an article consist of bare URLs, or otherwise fail to provide needed bibliographic data – such as the name of the source, the title of the article or web page consulted, the author (if known), the publication date (if known), and the page numbers (where relevant) – then that would not count as a "consistent citation style" and can be changed freely to insert such data. The data provided should be sufficient to uniquely identify the source, allow readers to find it, and allow readers to initially evaluate a source without retrieving it.

Generally considered helpful

The following are standard practice:

• improving existing citations by adding missing information, such as by replacing bare URLs with full bibliographic citations: an improvement because it aids verifiability, and fights link rot;
• replacing some or all general references with inline citations: an improvement because it provides more verifiable information to the reader, and helps maintain text–source integrity;
• imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles (e.g., some of the citations in footnotes and others as parenthetical references): an improvement because it makes the citations easier to understand and edit;
• fixing errors in citation coding, including incorrectly used template parameters, and <ref> markup problems: an improvement because it helps the citations to be parsed correctly;
• combining duplicate citations (see § Duplicate citations, above);
• converting parenthetical referencing to an acceptable referencing style;
• replacing opaque named-reference names with conventional ones, such as "Einstein-1905" instead of ":27"; and
• making citations added by other editors match the existing style (if any). Do not revert someone else's contribution merely because the citation style doesn't match. If you know how to fix it, then fix it.

To be avoided

When an article is already consistent, avoid:

• switching between major citation styles or replacing the preferred style of one academic discipline with another's – except when moving away from deprecated styles, such as parenthetical referencing;
• adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without templates, or removing citation templates from an article that uses them consistently;
• changing where the references are defined, e.g., moving reference definitions in the reflist to the prose, or moving reference definitions from the prose into the reflist.

Parenthetical referencing

"WP:PARENTHETICAL" redirects here. For guidelines on the use of parentheses (round brackets), see WP:Manual of Style § Brackets and parentheses.

Since September 2020, inline parenthetical referencing has been deprecated on Wikipedia. This includes short citations in parentheses placed within the article text itself, such as (Smith 2010, p. 1). This does not affect short citations that use <ref> tags, which are not inline parenthetical references; see the section on short citations above for that method. As part of the deprecation process in existing articles, discussion of how best to convert inline parenthetical citations into currently accepted formats should be held if there is objection to a particular method.

This should no longer be used, and should be replaced with footnotes if encountered:

N

The Sun is pretty big (Miller 2005, p. 1), but the Moon is not so big (Brown 2006, p. 2). The Sun is also quite hot (Miller 2005, p. 3).

References

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

Handling links in citations

As noted above under "What information to include", it is helpful to include hyperlinks to source material, when available. Here we note some issues concerning these links.

Avoid embedded links

See also: WP:NOELBODY

Embedded links to external websites should not be used as a form of inline citation, because they are highly susceptible to linkrot. Wikipedia allowed this in its early years—for example by adding a link after a sentence, like this: [https://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1601858,00.html], which is rendered as: [1]. This is no longer recommended. Raw links are not recommended in lieu of properly written out citations, even if placed between ref tags, like this <ref>[https://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1601858,00.html]</ref>. Since any citation that accurately identifies the source is better than none, do not revert the good-faith addition of partial citations. They should be considered temporary, and replaced with more complete, properly formatted citations as soon as possible.

Embedded links should never be used to place external links in the content of an article, like this: "Example Inc. announced their latest product ...".

Convenience links

Further information: Wikipedia:Copyrights § Linking to copyrighted works, and Help:Citation Style 1 § Online sources

A convenience link is a link to a copy of your source on a web page provided by someone other than the original publisher or author. For example, a copy of 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 rights-holders' copyrights. Accuracy can be assumed when the hosting website appears reliable.

For academic sources, the convenience link is typically a reprint provided by an open-access repository, such as the author's university's library or institutional repository. Such green open access links are generally preferable to paywalled or otherwise commercial and unfree sources.

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.

Indicating availability

If your source is not available online, it should be available in libraries, archives, or collections. If a citation without an external link is challenged as unavailable, any of the following is sufficient to show the material to be reasonably available (though not necessarily reliable): providing an ISBN or OCLC number; linking to an established Wikipedia article about the source (the work, its author, or its publisher); or directly quoting the material on the talk page, briefly and in context.

Links to sources

For a source available in hardcopy, microform, and/or online, omit, in most cases, which one you read. While it is useful to cite author, title, edition (1st, 2nd, etc.), and similar information, it generally is not important to cite a database such as ProQuest, EBSCOhost, or JSTOR (see the list of academic databases and search engines) or to link to such a database requiring a subscription or a third party's login. The basic bibliographic information you provide should be enough to search for the source in any of these databases that have the source. Don't add a URL that has a part of a password embedded in the URL. However, you may provide the DOI, ISBN, or another uniform identifier, if available. If the publisher offers a link to the source or its abstract that does not require a payment or a third party's login for access, you may provide the URL for that link. If the source only exists online, give the link even if access is restricted (see WP:PAYWALL).

Preventing and repairing dead links

See also: Wikipedia:Link rot and Help:Archiving a source

To help prevent dead links, persistent identifiers are available for some sources. Some journal articles have a digital object identifier (DOI); some online newspapers and blogs, and also Wikipedia, have permalinks that are stable. When permanent links aren't available, consider making an archived copy of the cited document when writing the article; on-demand web archiving services such as the Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/save) or archive.today (https://archive.today) are fairly easy to use (see pre-emptive archiving).

Do not delete a citation merely because the URL is not working. Dead links should be repaired or replaced if possible. If you encounter a dead URL being used as a reliable source to support article content, follow these steps prior to deleting it:

1. Confirm status: First, check the link to confirm that it is dead and not temporarily down. Search the website to see whether it has been rearranged. The online service "Is it down right now?" can help to determine if a site is down, and any information known.
2. Check for a changed URL on the same Web site: Pages are frequently moved to different locations on the same site as they become archive content rather than news. The site's error page may have a "Search" box; alternatively, in both the Google and DuckDuckGo search engines – among others – the keyterm "site:" can be used. For instance: site:nytimes.com "the goose is loose".
3. Check for web archives: Many web archiving services exist (for a full list, see: Wikipedia:List of web archives on Wikipedia); link to their archive of the URL's content, if available. Examples:
   • Internet Archive has billions of archived web pages. See Wikipedia:Using the Wayback Machine.
   • archive.today See Wikipedia:Using archive.today
   • The UK Government Web Archive (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/) preserves 1500 UK central government websites.

If multiple archive dates are available, try to use one that is most likely to be the contents of the page seen by the editor who entered the reference on the |access-date=. If that parameter is not specified, a search of the article's revision history can be performed to determine when the link was added to the article.

For most citation templates, archive locations are entered using the |archive-url=, |archive-date= and |url-status= parameters. The primary link is switched to the archive link when |url-status=dead. This retains the original link location for reference.

If the web page now leads to a completely different website, set |url-status=usurped to hide the original website link in the citation.

Note: Some archives currently operate with a delay of ~18 months before a link is made public. As a result, editors should wait ~24 months after the link is first tagged as dead before declaring that no web archive exists. Dead URLs to reliable sources should normally be tagged with {{dead link|date=December 2024}}, so that you can estimate how long the link has been dead.

Bookmarklets to check common archive sites for archives of the current page:

Archive.org

javascript:void(window.open('https://web.archive.org/web/*/'+location.href))

archive.today / archive.is

javascript:void(window.open('https://archive.today/'+location.href))

Mementos interface

javascript:void(window.open('https://www.webarchive.org.uk/mementos/search/'+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'?referrer='+encodeURIComponent(document.referrer)))

4. Remove convenience links: If the material was published on paper (e.g., academic journal, newspaper article, magazine, book), then the dead URL is not necessary. Simply remove the dead URL, leaving the remainder of the reference intact.
5. Find a replacement source: Search the web for quoted text, the article title, and parts of the URL. Consider contacting the website/person that originally published the reference and asking them to republish it. Ask other editors for help finding the reference somewhere else, including the user who added the reference. Find a different source that says essentially the same thing as the reference in question.
6. Remove hopelessly-lost web-only sources: If the source material does not exist offline, and if there is no archived version of the web page (be sure to wait ~24 months), and if you cannot find another copy of the material, then the dead citation should be removed and the material it supports should be regarded as unverified if there is no other supporting citation. If it is material that is specifically required by policy to have an inline citation, then please consider tagging it with {{citation needed}}. It may be appropriate for you to move the citation to the talk page with an explanation, and notify the editor who added the now-dead link.

Text–source integrity

"WP:INTEGRITY" redirects here. For WikiProject Integrity, see WP:WPINTEGRITY.

When using inline citations, it is important to maintain text–source integrity. The point of an inline citation is to allow readers and other editors to see which part of the material is supported by the citation; that point is lost if the citation is not clearly placed. The distance between material and its source is a matter of editorial judgment, but adding text without clearly placing its source may lead to allegations of original research, of violations of the sourcing policy, and even of plagiarism.

Keeping citations close

Editors should exercise caution when rearranging or inserting material to ensure that text–source relationships are maintained. References should not be moved if doing so might break the text–source relationship.

If a sentence or paragraph is footnoted with a source, adding new material that is not supported by the existing source to the sentence/paragraph, without a source for the new text, is highly misleading if placed to appear that the cited source supports it. When new text is inserted into a paragraph, make sure it is supported by the existing or a new source. For example, when editing text originally reading

The sun is pretty big.

Notes

---

an edit that does not imply that the new material is supported by the same reference is

The sun is pretty big. The sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

Do not add other facts or assertions into a fully cited paragraph or sentence:

N

The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

Include a source to support the new information. There are several ways to write this, including:

Y

The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

Citation order

"Wikipedia:REFORDER" redirects here. For the RfC, see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 136 § RfC: AWB bot ref reordering.

There is no consensus for a specific ordering of citations, and editors should not edit-war over it, nor make mass changes of ordering to suit personal preferences. In particular, references need not be moved solely to maintain the numerical order of footnotes as they appear in the article.

Bundling citations

Main page: Help:Citation merging

See also: Help:Shortened footnotes § Bundling citations, and Wikipedia:Citation overkill

Sometimes the article is more readable if multiple citations are bundled into a single footnote. For example, when there are multiple sources for a given sentence, and each source applies to the entire sentence, the sources can be placed at the end of the sentence, like this: Or they can be bundled into one footnote at the end of the sentence or paragraph, like this:

Bundling is also useful if the sources each support a different portion of the preceding text, or if the sources all support the same text. Bundling has several advantages:

• It helps readers and other editors see at a glance which source supports which point, maintaining text–source integrity;
• It avoids the visual clutter of multiple clickable footnotes inside a sentence or paragraph;
• It avoids the confusion of having multiple sources listed separately after sentences, with no indication of which source to check for each part of the text, such as this.
• It makes it less likely that inline citations will be moved inadvertently when text is re-arranged, because the footnote states clearly which source supports which point.

To concatenate multiple citations for the same content into a single footnote, there are several layouts available, as illustrated below:

The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

Use {{Unbulleted list citebundle}}:

Use an inline paragraph:

Use a bullet list:

This last approach needs an introductory line like "Multiple sources:" to prevent an unwanted linebreak after the footnote number.

Simply using line breaks to separate list items breaches MOS:Accessibility § Nobreaks: "<br /> line breaks ... should not be used." {{Unbulleted list citebundle}} a.k.a. {{Multiref}} was made specifically for this purpose. Some other templates in the same vein are listed at the disambiguation page Template:Multiple references.

Within a given article only a single layout should generally be used, except that inline may always be appropriate for shortened references, often all for the same statement:

In-text attribution

Further information: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view § Attributing and specifying biased statements, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Point of view

In-text attribution is the attribution inside a sentence of material to its source, in addition to an inline citation after the sentence. In-text attribution may need to be used with direct speech (a source's words between quotation marks or as a block quotation); indirect speech (a source's words modified without quotation marks); and close paraphrasing. It may also be used when loosely summarizing a source's position in your own words, and it should always be used for biased statements of opinion. For certain frequently discussed sources, in-text attribution is always recommended. It avoids inadvertent plagiarism and helps the reader see where a position is coming from. An inline citation should follow the attribution, usually at the end of the sentence or paragraph in question.

For example:

N To reach fair decisions, parties must consider matters as if behind a veil of ignorance.

Y John Rawls argues that, to reach fair decisions, parties must consider matters as if behind a veil of ignorance.

Y John Rawls argues that, to reach fair decisions, parties must consider matters as if "situated behind a veil of ignorance".

When using in-text attribution, make sure it doesn't lead to an inadvertent neutrality violation. For example, the following implies parity between the sources, without making clear that the position of Darwin is the majority view:

N Charles Darwin says that human beings evolved through natural selection, but John Smith writes that we arrived here in pods from Mars.

Y Humans evolved through natural selection, as first explained in Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.

Neutrality issues apart, there are other ways in-text attribution can mislead. The sentence below suggests The New York Times has alone made this important discovery:

N According to The New York Times, the sun will set in the west this evening.

Y The sun sets in the west each evening.

It is preferable not to clutter articles with information best left to the references. Interested readers can click on the ref to find out the publishing journal:

N In an article published in The Lancet in 2012, researchers announced the discovery of the new tissue type.

Y Researchers announced the new tissue type in 2012.

Simple facts such as this can have inline citations to reliable sources as an aid to the reader, but normally the text itself is best left as a plain statement without in-text attribution:

Y By mass, oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen and helium.

Dealing with unsourced material

If an article has no references at all, then:

• If the entire article is patent nonsense, tag it for speedy deletion using criterion G1.
• If the article is a biography of a living person, it can be tagged with {{subst:prod blp}} to propose deletion. If it's a biography of a living person and is an attack page, then it should be tagged for speedy deletion using criterion G10, which will blank the page.
• If the article doesn't fit into the above two categories, then consider finding references yourself, or commenting on the article talk page or the talk page of the article creator. You may also tag the article with the {{unreferenced}} template and consider nominating it for deletion.

For individual claims in an article not supported by a reference:

• If the article is a biography of a living person, then any contentious material must be removed immediately: see Biographies of living persons. If the material lacking reference is seriously inappropriate, it may need to be hidden from general view, in which case request admin assistance.
• If the material added appears to be false or an expression of opinion, remove it and inform the editor who added the unsourced material. The {{uw-unsourced1}} template may be placed on their talk page.
• In any other case consider finding references yourself, or commenting on the article talk page or the talk page of the editor who added the unsourced material. You may place a {{citation needed}} or {{dubious}} tag against the added text.

Citation templates and tools

Further information: Wikipedia:Citation templates and Help:Citation tools

For a comparison of citations using templates with citations written freehand, see Wikipedia:Citing sources/Example edits for different methods § Footnotes.

Citation templates can be used to format citations in a consistent way. The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged: an article should not be switched between templated and non-templated citations without good reason and consensus – see "Variation in citation methods", above.

If citation templates are used in an article, the parameters should be accurate. It is inappropriate to set parameters to false values to cause the template to render as if it were written in some style other than the style normally produced by the template (e.g., MLA style).

Metadata

Citations may be accompanied by metadata, though it is not mandatory. Most citation templates on Wikipedia use the COinS standard. Metadata such as this allow browser plugins and other automated software to make citation data accessible to the user, for instance by providing links to their library's online copies of the cited works. In articles that format citations manually, metadata may be added manually in a span, according to the COinS specification.

See also

How to cite

• Wikipedia:References dos and don'ts – a concise summary of some of the most important guidance on this page
• Help:Referencing for beginners – a simple practical guide to getting started
• Help:How to mine a source – case study on getting maximum information from cited material
• Wikipedia:Verification methods – listing examples of the most common ways that citations are used in Wikipedia articles
• Wikipedia:Improving referencing efforts – essay on why references are important
• Wikipedia:Citation templates – a full listing of various styles for citing all sorts of materials
• Wikipedia:Citing sources/Example edits for different methods – showing comparative edit mode representations for different citation methods and techniques
• Wikipedia:Citing sources/Further considerations – additional considerations for citing sources
• Wikipedia:Inline citation – more information on inline citations
• Wikipedia:Nesting footnotes – how-to guide on "nesting" footnotes
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout § Further reading – for information about the "Further reading" section
• Wikipedia:External links – for information about the "External links" section
• Wikipedia:Plagiarism § Public-domain sources – guideline covering the inclusion of material in the public domain
• Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines – guidelines for dealing with scientific and mathematical articles
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Shared Resources – project guide on finding resources
• MediaWiki:Extension:Cite – details of the software which support the <ref> parser hooks

Citation problems

• Template:Irrelevant citation – inline template to note source simply is not relevant to the material
• Template:More citations needed – template to add to article (or section) where citations are insufficient
• Template:Text-source – template to add to article (or section) where text–source integrity is questioned
• Wikipedia:Citation needed – explanation of template to tag statements that need a citation
• Wikipedia:Citation overkill – why too many citations on one fact can be a bad thing
• Wikipedia:Copyright problems – in case of text that has been copied verbatim inappropriately
• Wikipedia:Link rot – guide to preventing link rot
• Wikipedia:More seasoning doesn't mean more flavor – an essay about how less detail doesn't always mean less info
• Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue – an essay advising: do not cite already obvious information
• Wikipedia:You do need to cite that the sky is blue – an essay advising: just because something appears obvious to you does not mean it is obvious to everyone
• Wikipedia:Video links – an essay discussing the use of citations linking to YouTube and other user-submitted video sites
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Citation cleanup – a group of people devoted to cleaning up citations
• Wikipedia:Reference database – essay/proposal

Changing citation style formats

• WP:CITEVAR

Further reading

• "Online Style Guide". New Oxford Style Manual. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 2016. ISBN 978-0-19-876725-1.
• The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2017. ISBN 978-0-226-28705-8.
• "Academic Writing: Citing Sources". Writers Workshop. University of Illinois.
• "Citation Style Guides & Management Tools". Library Guides. LIU Post.
• "Citing: Help & how-to". Concordia University Library.
• "Citation Help". Subject Guides. University of Iowa.
• "Guide to Citation Style Guides". Journalism Resources. University of Iowa.
• "Library: Citing Sources & Citation Generators". Capital Community College.
• "Research and Citation Resources". Online Writing Lab. Purdue University.
• "The Writer's Handbook: Documentation". Writing Center. University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• "ACS Style Guide". Research Guides. University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• "Samples of Formatted References for Authors of Journal Articles". MEDLINE and PubMed: The Resources Guide. United States National Library of Medicine. 26 April 2018.

External links

• "reFill". Toolforge. WP:ReFill. – tool that expands bare references semi-automatically
• Wikipedia editing basics: Citing sources (part 1) (YouTube). Wikimedia Foundation.
• Wikipedia editing basics: Citing sources (part 2) (YouTube). Wikimedia Foundation.

and 

For information on referencing citations in Wikipedia articles, see Help:Footnotes and Wikipedia:Inline citation. For information about citing Wikipedia articles for use in work outside of Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia.

"WP:CITE" and "WP:REF" redirect here. For the Citation Needed information page, see WP:CITENEED. For the reference desk, see WP:REFD.

"WP:CS" redirects here. For the policy on clean start, see Wikipedia:Clean start. For the computer science WikiProject, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science.

A citation, or reference, uniquely identifies a source of information, e.g.:

Ritter, R. M. (2003). The Oxford Style Manual. Oxford University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-19-860564-5.

Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations, anywhere in article space.

A citation or reference in an article usually has two parts. In the first part, each section of text that is either based on, or quoted from, an outside source is marked as such with an inline citation. This is usually displayed as a superscript footnote number: The second necessary part of the citation or reference is the list of full references, which provides complete, formatted detail about the source, so that anyone reading the article can find it and verify it.

This page explains how to place and format both parts of the citation. Each article should use one citation method or style throughout. If an article already has citations, preserve consistency by using that method or seek consensus on the talk page before changing it (the principle is reviewed at § Variation in citation methods). While you should try to write citations correctly, what matters most is that you provide enough information to identify the source. Others will improve the formatting if needed. See: "Help:Referencing for beginners", for a brief introduction on how to put references in Wikipedia articles; and cite templates in Visual Editor, about a graphical way for citation, included in Wikipedia.

Citation types

• An inline citation means any citation added close to the material it supports, for example after the sentence or paragraph, normally in the form of a footnote.
• In-text attribution involves adding the source of a statement to the article text, such as Rawls argues that X.^[5] This is done whenever a writer or speaker should be credited, such as with quotations, close paraphrasing, or statements of opinion or uncertain fact. The in-text attribution does not give full details of the source – this is done in a footnote in the normal way. See In-text attribution below.
• A general reference is a citation that supports content, but is not linked to any particular piece of material in the article through an inline citation. General references are usually listed at the end of the article in a References section. They are usually found in underdeveloped articles, especially when all article content is supported by a single source. They may also be listed in more developed articles as a supplement to inline citations.

Short and full citations

Main page: Help:Shortened footnotes

• A full citation fully identifies a reliable source and, where applicable, the place in that source (such as a page number) where the information in question can be found. For example: Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 1. This type of citation is usually given as a footnote, and is the most commonly used citation method in Wikipedia articles.
• A short citation is an inline citation that identifies the place in a source where specific information can be found, but without giving full details of the source. Some Wikipedia articles use it, giving summary information about the source together with a page number. For example, <ref>Rawls 1971, p. 1.</ref>, which renders as Rawls 1971, p. 1.. These are used together with full citations, which are listed in a separate "References" section or provided in an earlier footnote.

Forms of short citations used include author-date referencing (APA style, Harvard style, or Chicago style), and author-title or author-page referencing (MLA style or Chicago style). As before, the list of footnotes is automatically generated in a "Notes" or "Footnotes" section, which immediately precedes the "References" section containing the full citations to the source. Short citations can be written manually, or by using either the {{sfn}} or {{harvnb}} templates or the {{r}} referencing template. (Note that templates should not be added without consensus to an article that already uses a consistent referencing style.) The short citations and full citations may be linked so that the reader can click on the short note to find full information about the source. See the template documentation for details and solutions to common problems. For variations with and without templates, see wikilinks to full references. For a set of realistic examples, see these.

This is how short citations look in the edit box:

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}}

== References ==
* Brown, Rebecca (2006). "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 51 (78).
* Miller, Edward (2005). ''The Sun''. Academic Press.

This is how they look in the article:

The Sun is pretty big, but the Moon is not so big. The Sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

References

---

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

Shortened notes using titles rather than publication dates would look like this in the article:

Notes

---

When using manual links it is easy to introduce errors such as duplicate anchors and unused references. The script User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors will show many related errors. Duplicate anchors may be found by using the W3C Markup Validation Service.

When and why to cite sources

Further information: Wikipedia:When to cite

By citing sources for Wikipedia content you enable users to verify that the cited information is supported by reliable sources – improving the credibility of Wikipedia while showing that the content is not original research. You also help users find additional information on the subject; and by giving attribution you avoid plagiarising the source of your words or ideas.

In particular, sources are needed for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. If reliable sources cannot be found for challenged material, it is likely to be removed from the article. Sources are also required when quoting someone, with or without quotation marks, or closely paraphrasing a source. But the need to cite sources is not limited to those situations: editors are always encouraged to add or improve citations for any information in an article.

Citations are especially desirable for statements about living persons, particularly when the statements are contentious or potentially defamatory. In accordance with the biography of living persons policy, unsourced information of this type is likely to be removed on sight.

Multimedia

For an image or other media file, details of its origin and copyright status should appear on its file page. Image captions should be referenced as appropriate just like any other part of the article. A citation is not needed for descriptions such as alt text that are verifiable directly from the image itself, or for text that merely identifies a source (e.g., the caption "Belshazzar's Feast (1635)" for File:Rembrandt-Belsazar.jpg).

When not to cite

Further information: Wikipedia:When to cite § When a source or citation may not be needed

Citations are not used on disambiguation pages (sourcing for the information given there should be done in the target articles). Citations are often omitted from the lead section of an article, insofar as the lead summarizes information for which sources are given later in the article, although quotations and controversial statements, particularly if about living persons, should be supported by citations even in the lead. See WP:LEADCITE for more information.

Consecutive cites of the same source

Per WP:PAIC, citations should be placed at the end of the text that they support. Material that is repeated multiple times in a paragraph does not require an inline citation for every mention. If you say an elephant is a mammal more than once, provide one only at the first instance. Avoid cluttering text with redundant citations like this:

Elephants are large land mammals ... Elephants' teeth are very different from those of most other mammals. Unlike most mammals, which grow baby teeth and then replace them with a permanent set of adult teeth, elephants have cycles of tooth rotation throughout their entire lives.

This does not apply to lists or tables, nor does it apply when multiple sources support different parts of a paragraph or passage. Citation requirements for WP:DYK may require a citation to be inserted (for the duration of the DYK listing) even within a passage completely cited to the same sources.

Inline citations

Further information: Wikipedia:Inline citation

Inline citations allow the reader to associate a given piece of material in an article with the specific reliable source(s) that support it. Inline citations are added using footnotes, long or short.

How to place an inline citation using ref tags

Further information: Footnotes: the basics

To create a footnote, use the <ref>...</ref> syntax at the appropriate place in the article text, for example:

• Justice is a human invention.<ref>Rawls, John. ''A Theory of Justice''. Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 1.</ref> It ...

which will be displayed as something like:

• Justice is a human invention. It ...

It will also be necessary to generate the list of footnotes (where the citation text is actually displayed); for this, see the previous section.

As in the above example, citation markers are normally placed after adjacent punctuation such as periods (full stops) and commas. For exceptions, see the WP:Manual of Style § Punctuation and footnotes. Note also that no space is added before the citation marker. Citations should not be placed within, or on the same line as, section headings.

The citation should be added close to the material it supports, offering text–source integrity. If a word or phrase is particularly contentious, an inline citation may be added next to that word or phrase within the sentence, but it is usually sufficient to add the citation to the end of the clause, sentence, or paragraph, so long as it's clear which source supports which part of the text.

Avoiding clutter

Inline references can significantly bloat the wikitext in the edit window and can become confusing and difficult to manage. There are two main methods to avoid clutter in the edit window:

• Using list-defined references by collecting the full citation code within the reference list template {{reflist}}, and then inserting them in the text with a shortened reference tag, for example <ref name="Smith 2001, p99" />.
• Inserting short citations (see below) that then refer to a full list of source texts

As with other citation formats, articles should not undergo large-scale conversion between formats without consensus to do so.

Note, however, that references defined in the reference list template can no longer be edited with the VisualEditor.

Repeated citations

Further information: Footnotes: using a source more than once

For multiple use of the same inline citation or footnote, you can use the named references feature, choosing a name to identify the inline citation, and typing <ref name="name">text of the citation</ref>. Thereafter, the same named reference may be reused any number of times either before or after the defining use by typing the previous reference name, like this: <ref name="name" />. The use of the slash before the > means that the tag is self-closing, and the </ref> used to close other references must not be used in addition.

The text of the name can be almost anything‍—‌apart from being completely numeric. If spaces are used in the text of the name, the text must be placed within double quotes. Placing all named references within double quotes may be helpful to future editors who do not know that rule. To help with page maintenance, it is recommended that the text of the name have a connection to the inline citation or footnote, for example "author year page": <ref name="Smith 2005 p94">text of the citation</ref>.

Use straight quotation marks " to enclose the reference name. Do not use curly quotation marks “”. Curly marks are treated as another character, not as delimiters. The page will display an error if one style of quotation marks is used when first naming the reference, and the other style is used in a repeated reference, or if a mix of styles is used in the repeated references.

Citing multiple pages of the same source

Further information: Help:References and page numbers

When an article cites many different pages from the same source, to avoid the redundancy of many big, nearly identical full citations, most Wikipedia editors use one of these options:

• Named references in conjunction with a combined list of page numbers using the |pages= parameter of the {{cite xxx}} templates (can become confusing for large number of pages)
• Named references in conjunction with the {{rp}} or {{r}} templates to specify the page
• Short citations

The use of ibid., id., or similar abbreviations is discouraged, as they may become broken as new references are added (op. cit. is less problematic in that it should refer explicitly to a citation contained in the article; however, not all readers are familiar with the meaning of the terms). If the use of ibid is extensive, tag the article using the {{ibid}} template.

What information to include

Listed below is the information that a typical inline citation or general reference will provide, though other details may be added as necessary. This information is included in order to identify the source, assist readers in finding it, and (in the case of inline citations) indicate the place in the source where the information is to be found. (If an article uses short citations, then the inline citations will refer to this information in abbreviated form, as described in the relevant sections above.)

In general, the citation information should be cited as it appears in the original source. For example, the album notes from Hurts 2B Human should not be cited as being from the album Hurts to be Human, or an X (formerly Twitter) user named "i😍dogs" should not be cited as "i[love]dogs". Retain the original special glyphs and spelling.

Use details in citing. Citations 1–3 are good, while citations 4–6 should be improved.

Examples

Books

See also the template {{cite book}}.

Citations for books typically include:

• name of author(s)
• title of book
• volume when appropriate
• name of publisher
• place of publication
• date of publication of the edition
• chapter or page numbers cited, if appropriate
• edition, if not the first edition
• ISBN (optional)

Some edited books have individually authored chapters. Citations for these chapters are recommended. They typically include:

• name of author(s)
• title of the chapter
• name of book's editor
• name of book and other details as above
• chapter number or page numbers for the chapter (optional)

In some instances, the verso of a book's title page may record, "Reprinted with corrections XXXX" or similar, where "XXXX" is a year. This is a different version of a book in the same way that different editions are different versions. Note this in your citation. See § Dates and reprints for further information.

Journal articles

See also the template {{cite journal}}.

Citations for journal articles typically include:

• name of the author(s)
• year and sometimes month of publication
• title of the article
• name of the journal
• volume number, issue number, and page numbers (article numbers in some electronic journals)
• DOI and/or other identifiers are optional and can often be used in place of a less stable URL (although URLs may also be listed in a journal citation)

Newspaper articles

See also the template {{cite news}}.

Citations for newspaper articles typically include:

• byline (author's name), if any
• title of the article
• name of the newspaper in italics
• city of publication (if not included in name of newspaper)
• date of publication
• page number(s) are optional and may be substituted with negative number(s) on microfilm reels

Web pages

See also the template {{cite web}}.

Citations for World Wide Web pages typically include:

• URL of the specific web page where the referenced content can be found
• name of the author(s)
• title of the article
• title or domain name of the website
• publisher, if known
• date of publication
• page number(s) (if applicable)
• the date you retrieved (or accessed) the web page (required if the publication date is unknown)

Sound recordings

Further information: Help:References and page numbers § Other in-source locations

Citations for sound recordings typically include:

• name of the composer(s), songwriter(s), script writer(s) or the like
• name of the performer(s)
• title of the song or individual track
• title of the album (if applicable)
• name of the record label
• year of release
• medium (for example: LP, audio cassette, CD, MP3 file)
• approximate time at which event or point of interest occurs, where appropriate

Do not cite an entire body of work by one performer. Instead, make one citation for each work your text relies on.

Film, television, or video recordings

See also the template {{cite AV media}}.

Citations for films, TV episodes, or video recordings typically include:

• name of the director
• name of the producer, if relevant
• names of major performers
• the title of a TV episode
• title of the film or TV series
• name of the studio
• year of release
• medium (for example: film, videocassette, DVD)
• approximate time at which event or point of interest occurs, where appropriate

Wikidata

See also the template {{cite Q}}.

Wikidata is largely user-generated, and articles should not directly cite Wikidata as a source (just as it would be inappropriate to cite other Wikipedias' articles as sources).

But Wikidata's statements can be directly transcluded into articles; this is usually done to provide external links or infobox data. For example, more than two million external links from Wikidata are shown through the {{Authority control}} template. There has been controversy over the use of Wikidata in the English Wikipedia due to vandalism and its own sourcing. While there is no consensus on whether information from Wikidata should be used at all, there is general agreement that any Wikidata statements that are transcluded need to be just as – or more – reliable compared to Wikipedia content. As such, Module:WikidataIB and some related modules and templates filter Wikidata statements not supported by a reference by default; however, other modules and templates, such as Module:Wikidata, do not.

To transclude an item from Wikidata, the QID (Q number) of an item in Wikidata needs to be known. QID can by found by searching for an item by the name or DOI in Wikidata. A book, a journal article, a musical recording, sheet music or any other item can be represented by a structured item in Wikidata.

The {{Cite Q}} template can be used to cite works whose metadata is held in Wikidata, provided the cited work meets Wikipedia's standards. As of December 2020, {{Cite Q}} does not support "last, first" or Vancouver-style author name lists, so it should not be used in articles in which "last, first" or Vancouver-style author names are the dominant citation style.

Other

See also:

• {{cite album notes}}
• {{cite comic}}
• {{cite conference}} for conference reports or papers
• {{cite court}} for court cases or legal decisions
• {{cite act}} for a law or legal act
• {{cite encyclopedia}}
• {{cite episode}} for TV or radio series
• {{cite mailing list}}
• {{cite map}}
• {{cite newsgroup}}
• {{cite patent}} for patents
• {{cite press release}}
• {{cite report}}
• {{cite thesis}}
• {{cite video game}}

Identifying parts of a source

Further information: Help:References and page numbers

When citing lengthy sources, you should identify which part of a source is being cited.

Books and print articles

Specify the page number or range of page numbers. Page numbers are not required for a reference to the book or article as a whole. When you specify a page number, it is helpful to specify the version (date and edition for books) of the source because the layout, pagination, length, etc. can change between editions.

If there are no page numbers, whether in ebooks or print materials, then you can use other means of identifying the relevant section of a lengthy work, such as the chapter number, the section title, or the specific entry.

In some works, such as plays and ancient works, there are standard methods of referring to sections, such as "Act 1, scene 2" for plays and Bekker numbers for Aristotle's works. Use these methods whenever appropriate.

Audio and video sources

Specify the time at which the event or other point of interest occurs. Be as precise as possible about the version of the source that you are citing; for example, movies are often released in different editions or "cuts". Due to variations between formats and playback equipment, precision may not be accurate in some cases. However, many government agencies do not publish minutes and transcripts but do post video of official meetings online; generally the subcontractors who handle audio-visual are quite precise.

Links and ID numbers

A citation ideally includes a link or ID number to help editors locate the source. If you have a URL (web page) link, you can add it to the title part of the citation, so that when you add the citation to Wikipedia the URL becomes hidden and the title becomes clickable. To do this, enclose the URL and the title in square brackets—the URL first, then a space, then the title. For example:

''[https://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol66/mono66-7.pdf IARC Monographs On The Evaluation Of Carcinogenic Risks To Humans – Doxefazepam]''. International Agency For Research On Cancer (IARC). 66: 97–104. 13–20 February 1996.

For web-only sources with no publication date, the "Retrieved" date (or the date you accessed the web page) should be included, in case the web page changes in the future. For example: Retrieved 15 July 2011 or you can use the access-date parameter in the automatic Wikipedia:refToolbar 2.0 editing window feature.

You can also add an ID number to the end of a citation. The ID number might be an ISBN for a book, a DOI (digital object identifier) for an article or some e-books, or any of several ID numbers that are specific to particular article databases, such as a PMID number for articles on PubMed. It may be possible to format these so that they are automatically activated and become clickable when added to Wikipedia, for example by typing ISBN (or PMID) followed by a space and the ID number.

If your source is not available online, it should be available in reputable libraries, archives, or collections. If a citation without an external link is challenged as unavailable, any of the following is sufficient to show the material to be reasonably available (though not necessarily reliable): providing an ISBN or OCLC number; linking to an established Wikipedia article about the source (the work, its author, or its publisher); or directly quoting the material on the talk page, briefly and in context.

Linking to pages in PDF files

Links to long PDF documents can be made more convenient by taking readers to a specific page with the addition of #page=n to the document URL, where n is the page number. For example, using https://www.domain.com/document.pdf#page=5 as the citation URL displays page five of the document in any PDF viewer that supports this feature. If the viewer or browser does not support it, it will display the first page instead.

Linking to Google Books pages

Further information: Wikipedia:Google Books and Wikipedia

Google Books sometimes allows numbered book pages to be linked to directly. Page links should only be added when the book is available for preview; they will not work with snippet view. Keep in mind that availability varies by location. No editor is required to add page links, but if another editor adds them, they should not be removed without cause; see the October 2010 RfC for further information.

These can be added in several ways (with and without citation templates):

• Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 18.
• Or with a template: Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. p. 18.
• Rawls 1971, p. 18.
• Rawls 1971, p. 18.
• Rawls 1971, p. 18.
• Rawls 1971, 18.

In edit mode, the URL for p. 18 of A Theory of Justice can be entered like this using the {{Cite book}} template:

{{cite book |last=Rawls |first=John |date=1971 |title=A Theory of Justice |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kvpby7HtAe0C&pg=PA18 |publisher=Harvard University Press |page=18}}

or like this, in the first of the above examples, formatted manually:

Rawls, John. [https://books.google.com/books?id=kvpby7HtAe0C&pg=PA18 ''A Theory of Justice'']. Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 18.

When the page number is a Roman numeral, commonly seen at the beginning of books, the URL looks like this for page xvii (Roman numeral 17) of the same book:

     https://books.google.com/books?id=kvpby7HtAe0C&pg=PR17

The &pg=PR17 indicates "page, Roman, 17", in contrast to the &pg=PA18, "page, Arabic, 18" the URL given earlier.

You can also link to a tipped-in page, such as an unnumbered page of images between two regular pages. (If the page contains an image that is protected by copyright, it will be replaced by a tiny notice saying "copyrighted image".) The URL for eleventh tipped-in page inserted after page 304 of The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, looks like this:

     https://books.google.com/books?id=dBs4CO1DsF4C&pg=PA304-IA11

The &pg=PA304-IA11 can be interpreted as "page, Arabic, 304; inserted after: 11".

Note that some templates properly support links only in parameters specifically designed to hold URLs like |url= and |archive-url= and that placing links in other parameters may not link properly or will cause mangled COinS metadata output. However, the |page= and |pages= parameters of all Citation Style 1/Citation Style 2 citation templates, the family of {{sfn}}- and {{harv}}-style templates, as well as {{r}}, {{rp}} and {{ran}} are designed to be safe in this regard as well.

Citer may be helpful.

Users may also link the quotation on Google Books to individual titles, via a short permalink which ends with their related ISBN, OCLC or LCCN numerical code, e.g.: https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0521349931, a permalink to the Google book with the ISBN code 0521349931. For further details, you may see How-to explanation on support.google.com.

Say where you read it

"Say where you read it" follows the practice in academic writing of citing sources directly only if you have read the source yourself. If your knowledge of the source is secondhand—that is, if you have read Jones (2010), who cited Smith (2009), and you want to use what Smith (2009) said—make clear that your knowledge of Smith is based on your reading of Jones.

When citing the source, write the following (this formatting is just an example):

John Smith (2009). Name of Book I Haven't Seen, Cambridge University Press, p. 99, cited in Paul Jones (2010). Name of Encyclopedia I Have Seen, Oxford University Press, p. 29.

Or if you are using short citations:

Smith (2009), p. 99, cited in Jones (2010), p. 29.

The same principle applies when indicating the source of images and other media files in an article.

Note: The advice to "say where you read it" does not mean that you have to give credit to any search engines, websites, libraries, library catalogs, archives, subscription services, bibliographies, or other sources that led you to Smith's book. If you have read a book or article yourself, that's all you have to cite. You do not have to specify how you obtained and read it.

So long as you are confident that you read a true and accurate copy, it does not matter whether you read the material using an online service like Google Books; using preview options at a bookseller's website like Amazon; through your library; via online paid databases of scanned publications, such as JSTOR; using reading machines; on an e-reader (except to the extent that this affects page numbering); or any other method.

Dates and reprints

Date a book that is identically reprinted or printed-on-demand to the first date in which the edition became available. For example, if an edition of a book was first released in 2005 with an identical reprinting in 2007, date it to 2005. If substantive changes were made in a reprint, sometimes marked on the verso with "Reprinted with corrections", note the edition and append the corrected reprint year to it (e.g. "1st ed. reprinted with corrections 2005").

Editors should be aware that older sources (especially those in the public domain) are sometimes republished with modern publication dates; treat these as new publications. When this occurs and the citation style being used requires it, cite both the new and original publication dates, e.g.:

• Darwin, Charles (1964) [1859]. On the Origin of Species (facsimile of 1st ed.). Harvard University Press.

This is done automatically in the {{citation}} and {{cite book}} templates when you use the |orig-date= parameter.

Alternately, information about the reprint can be appended as a textual note:

• Boole, George (1854). An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which Are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities. Macmillan. Reprinted with corrections, Dover Publications, New York, NY, 1958.

Seasonal publication dates and differing calendar systems

Publication dates, for both older and recent sources, should be written with the goal of helping the reader find the publication and, once found, confirm that the correct publication has been located. For example, if the publication date bears a date in the Julian calendar, it should not be converted to the Gregorian calendar.

If the publication date was given as a season or holiday, such as "Winter" or "Christmas" of a particular year or two-year span, it should not be converted to a month or date, such as July–August or December 25. If a publication provided both seasonal and specific dates, prefer the specific one.

Additional annotation

In most cases it is sufficient for a citation footnote simply to identify the source (as described in the sections above); readers can then consult the source to see how it supports the information in the article. Sometimes, however, it is useful to include additional annotation in the footnote, for example to indicate precisely which information the source is supporting (particularly when a single footnote lists more than one source – see § Bundling citations and § Text–source integrity, below).

A footnote may also contain a relevant quotation from the source. This is especially helpful when the cited text is long or dense. A quotation allows readers to immediately identify the applicable portion of the reference. Quotes are also useful if the source is not easily accessible. However, caution should be exercised, as always, to avoid copyright violations.

In the case of non-English sources, it may be helpful to quote from the original text and then give an English translation. If the article itself contains a translation of a quote from such a source (without the original), then the original should be included in the footnote. (See the WP:Verifiability § Non-English sources policy for more information.)

Notes and references section

Main page: WP:Manual of Style/Layout § Notes and references

See also: Help:Footnotes and WP:Manual of Style/Layout § Standard appendices and footers

This section describes how to add footnotes and also describes how to create a list of full bibliography citations to support shortened footnotes.

The first editor to add footnotes to an article must create a dedicated citations section where they are to appear. Any reasonable name may be chosen. The most frequent choice is "References". Other options in diminishing order of popularity are, "Notes", "Footnotes", or "Works cited", although these are more often used to distinguish between multiple end-matter sections or subsections.

For an example of headings of a notes section, see the article Tezcatlipoca.

General references

A general reference is a citation to a reliable source that supports content, but is not linked to any particular text in the article through an inline citation. General references are usually listed at the end of the article in a "References" section, and are usually sorted by the last name of the author or the editor. General reference sections are most likely to be found in underdeveloped articles, especially when all article content is supported by a single source. The disadvantage of general references is that text–source integrity is lost, unless the article is very short. They are frequently reworked by later editors into inline citations.

The appearance of a general references section is the same as those given above in the sections on short citations and parenthetical references. If both cited and uncited references exist, their distinction can be highlighted with separate section names, e.g., "References" and "General references".

How to create the list of citations

With some exceptions discussed below, citations appear in a single section containing only the <references /> tag or the {{Reflist}} template. For example:

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

or

== References ==
<references />

The footnotes will then automatically be listed under that section heading. Each numbered footnote marker in the text is a clickable link to the corresponding footnote, and each footnote contains a caret that links back to the corresponding point in the text.

Scrolling lists, or lists of citations appearing within a scroll box, should never be used. This is because of issues with readability, browser compatibility, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring.

If an article contains a list of general references, this is usually placed in a separate section, titled, for example, "References". This usually comes immediately after the section(s) listing footnotes, if any. (If the general references section is called "References", then the citations section is usually called "Notes".)

Separating citations from explanatory footnotes

See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout § Notes and references, and Help:Explanatory notes

If an article contains both footnoted citations and other (explanatory) footnotes, then it is possible (but not necessary) to divide them into two separate lists using footnotes groups. The explanatory footnotes and the citations are then placed in separate sections, called (for example) "Notes" and "References", respectively.

Another method of separating explanatory footnotes from footnoted references is using {{efn}} for the explanatory footnotes. The advantage of this system is that the content of an explanatory footnote can in this case be referenced with a footnoted citation. When explanatory footnotes and footnoted references are not in separate lists, {{refn}} can be used for explanatory footnotes containing footnoted citations.

Duplicate citations

Combine precisely duplicated full citations, in keeping with the existing citation style (if any). In this context "precisely duplicated" means having the same content, not necessarily identical strings ("The New York Times" is the same as "NY Times"; different access-dates are not significant). Do not discourage editors, particularly inexperienced ones, from adding duplicate citations when the use of the source is appropriate, because a duplicate is better than no citation. But any editor should feel free to combine them, and doing so is the best practice on Wikipedia.

Citations to different pages or parts of the same source can also be combined (preserving the distinct parts of the citations), as described in Help:References and page numbers. Any method that is consistent with the existing citation style (if any) may be used, or consensus can be sought to change the existing style. Some tools are listed at Help:Citation tools § Duplicate reference finders.

Citation style

While citations should aim to provide the information listed above, Wikipedia does not have a single house style, though citations within any given article should follow a consistent style. A number of citation styles exist, including those described in the Wikipedia articles for Citation, APA style, ASA style, MLA style, The Chicago Manual of Style, Author-date referencing, the Vancouver system and Bluebook.

Although nearly any consistent style may be used, avoid all-numeric date formats other than YYYY-MM-DD, because of the ambiguity concerning which number is the month and which the day. For example, 2002-06-11 may be used, but not 11/06/2002. The YYYY-MM-DD format should in any case be limited to Gregorian calendar dates where the year is after 1582. Because it could easily be confused with a range of years, the format YYYY-MM (for example: 2002-06) is not used.

For more information on the capitalization of cited works, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters § All caps and small caps.

Variation in citation methods

Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style, merely on the grounds of personal preference or to make it match other articles, without first seeking consensus for the change.

As with spelling differences, it is normal practice to defer to the style used by the first major contributor or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page, unless a change in consensus has been achieved. If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it; if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. If you are the first contributor to add citations to an article, you may choose whichever style you think best for the article. However, since 5 September 2020, inline parenthetical referencing is a deprecated citation style on English-language Wikipedia.

If all or most of the citations in an article consist of bare URLs, or otherwise fail to provide needed bibliographic data – such as the name of the source, the title of the article or web page consulted, the author (if known), the publication date (if known), and the page numbers (where relevant) – then that would not count as a "consistent citation style" and can be changed freely to insert such data. The data provided should be sufficient to uniquely identify the source, allow readers to find it, and allow readers to initially evaluate a source without retrieving it.

Generally considered helpful

The following are standard practice:

• improving existing citations by adding missing information, such as by replacing bare URLs with full bibliographic citations: an improvement because it aids verifiability, and fights link rot;
• replacing some or all general references with inline citations: an improvement because it provides more verifiable information to the reader, and helps maintain text–source integrity;
• imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles (e.g., some of the citations in footnotes and others as parenthetical references): an improvement because it makes the citations easier to understand and edit;
• fixing errors in citation coding, including incorrectly used template parameters, and <ref> markup problems: an improvement because it helps the citations to be parsed correctly;
• combining duplicate citations (see § Duplicate citations, above);
• converting parenthetical referencing to an acceptable referencing style;
• replacing opaque named-reference names with conventional ones, such as "Einstein-1905" instead of ":27"; and
• making citations added by other editors match the existing style (if any). Do not revert someone else's contribution merely because the citation style doesn't match. If you know how to fix it, then fix it.

To be avoided

When an article is already consistent, avoid:

• switching between major citation styles or replacing the preferred style of one academic discipline with another's – except when moving away from deprecated styles, such as parenthetical referencing;
• adding citation templates to an article that already uses a consistent system without templates, or removing citation templates from an article that uses them consistently;
• changing where the references are defined, e.g., moving reference definitions in the reflist to the prose, or moving reference definitions from the prose into the reflist.

Parenthetical referencing

"WP:PARENTHETICAL" redirects here. For guidelines on the use of parentheses (round brackets), see WP:Manual of Style § Brackets and parentheses.

Since September 2020, inline parenthetical referencing has been deprecated on Wikipedia. This includes short citations in parentheses placed within the article text itself, such as (Smith 2010, p. 1). This does not affect short citations that use <ref> tags, which are not inline parenthetical references; see the section on short citations above for that method. As part of the deprecation process in existing articles, discussion of how best to convert inline parenthetical citations into currently accepted formats should be held if there is objection to a particular method.

This should no longer be used, and should be replaced with footnotes if encountered:

N

The Sun is pretty big (Miller 2005, p. 1), but the Moon is not so big (Brown 2006, p. 2). The Sun is also quite hot (Miller 2005, p. 3).

References

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

Handling links in citations

As noted above under "What information to include", it is helpful to include hyperlinks to source material, when available. Here we note some issues concerning these links.

Avoid embedded links

See also: WP:NOELBODY

Embedded links to external websites should not be used as a form of inline citation, because they are highly susceptible to linkrot. Wikipedia allowed this in its early years—for example by adding a link after a sentence, like this: [https://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1601858,00.html], which is rendered as: [2]. This is no longer recommended. Raw links are not recommended in lieu of properly written out citations, even if placed between ref tags, like this <ref>[https://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1601858,00.html]</ref>. Since any citation that accurately identifies the source is better than none, do not revert the good-faith addition of partial citations. They should be considered temporary, and replaced with more complete, properly formatted citations as soon as possible.

Embedded links should never be used to place external links in the content of an article, like this: "Example Inc. announced their latest product ...".

Convenience links

Further information: Wikipedia:Copyrights § Linking to copyrighted works, and Help:Citation Style 1 § Online sources

A convenience link is a link to a copy of your source on a web page provided by someone other than the original publisher or author. For example, a copy of 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 rights-holders' copyrights. Accuracy can be assumed when the hosting website appears reliable.

For academic sources, the convenience link is typically a reprint provided by an open-access repository, such as the author's university's library or institutional repository. Such green open access links are generally preferable to paywalled or otherwise commercial and unfree sources.

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.

Indicating availability

If your source is not available online, it should be available in libraries, archives, or collections. If a citation without an external link is challenged as unavailable, any of the following is sufficient to show the material to be reasonably available (though not necessarily reliable): providing an ISBN or OCLC number; linking to an established Wikipedia article about the source (the work, its author, or its publisher); or directly quoting the material on the talk page, briefly and in context.

Links to sources

For a source available in hardcopy, microform, and/or online, omit, in most cases, which one you read. While it is useful to cite author, title, edition (1st, 2nd, etc.), and similar information, it generally is not important to cite a database such as ProQuest, EBSCOhost, or JSTOR (see the list of academic databases and search engines) or to link to such a database requiring a subscription or a third party's login. The basic bibliographic information you provide should be enough to search for the source in any of these databases that have the source. Don't add a URL that has a part of a password embedded in the URL. However, you may provide the DOI, ISBN, or another uniform identifier, if available. If the publisher offers a link to the source or its abstract that does not require a payment or a third party's login for access, you may provide the URL for that link. If the source only exists online, give the link even if access is restricted (see WP:PAYWALL).

Preventing and repairing dead links

See also: Wikipedia:Link rot and Help:Archiving a source

To help prevent dead links, persistent identifiers are available for some sources. Some journal articles have a digital object identifier (DOI); some online newspapers and blogs, and also Wikipedia, have permalinks that are stable. When permanent links aren't available, consider making an archived copy of the cited document when writing the article; on-demand web archiving services such as the Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/save) or archive.today (https://archive.today) are fairly easy to use (see pre-emptive archiving).

Do not delete a citation merely because the URL is not working. Dead links should be repaired or replaced if possible. If you encounter a dead URL being used as a reliable source to support article content, follow these steps prior to deleting it:

1. Confirm status: First, check the link to confirm that it is dead and not temporarily down. Search the website to see whether it has been rearranged. The online service "Is it down right now?" can help to determine if a site is down, and any information known.
2. Check for a changed URL on the same Web site: Pages are frequently moved to different locations on the same site as they become archive content rather than news. The site's error page may have a "Search" box; alternatively, in both the Google and DuckDuckGo search engines – among others – the keyterm "site:" can be used. For instance: site:nytimes.com "the goose is loose".
3. Check for web archives: Many web archiving services exist (for a full list, see: Wikipedia:List of web archives on Wikipedia); link to their archive of the URL's content, if available. Examples:
   • Internet Archive has billions of archived web pages. See Wikipedia:Using the Wayback Machine.
   • archive.today See Wikipedia:Using archive.today
   • The UK Government Web Archive (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/) preserves 1500 UK central government websites.

If multiple archive dates are available, try to use one that is most likely to be the contents of the page seen by the editor who entered the reference on the |access-date=. If that parameter is not specified, a search of the article's revision history can be performed to determine when the link was added to the article.

For most citation templates, archive locations are entered using the |archive-url=, |archive-date= and |url-status= parameters. The primary link is switched to the archive link when |url-status=dead. This retains the original link location for reference.

If the web page now leads to a completely different website, set |url-status=usurped to hide the original website link in the citation.

Note: Some archives currently operate with a delay of ~18 months before a link is made public. As a result, editors should wait ~24 months after the link is first tagged as dead before declaring that no web archive exists. Dead URLs to reliable sources should normally be tagged with {{dead link|date=December 2024}}, so that you can estimate how long the link has been dead.

Bookmarklets to check common archive sites for archives of the current page:

Archive.org

javascript:void(window.open('https://web.archive.org/web/*/'+location.href))

archive.today / archive.is

javascript:void(window.open('https://archive.today/'+location.href))

Mementos interface

javascript:void(window.open('https://www.webarchive.org.uk/mementos/search/'+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'?referrer='+encodeURIComponent(document.referrer)))

4. Remove convenience links: If the material was published on paper (e.g., academic journal, newspaper article, magazine, book), then the dead URL is not necessary. Simply remove the dead URL, leaving the remainder of the reference intact.
5. Find a replacement source: Search the web for quoted text, the article title, and parts of the URL. Consider contacting the website/person that originally published the reference and asking them to republish it. Ask other editors for help finding the reference somewhere else, including the user who added the reference. Find a different source that says essentially the same thing as the reference in question.
6. Remove hopelessly-lost web-only sources: If the source material does not exist offline, and if there is no archived version of the web page (be sure to wait ~24 months), and if you cannot find another copy of the material, then the dead citation should be removed and the material it supports should be regarded as unverified if there is no other supporting citation. If it is material that is specifically required by policy to have an inline citation, then please consider tagging it with {{citation needed}}. It may be appropriate for you to move the citation to the talk page with an explanation, and notify the editor who added the now-dead link.

Text–source integrity

"WP:INTEGRITY" redirects here. For WikiProject Integrity, see WP:WPINTEGRITY.

When using inline citations, it is important to maintain text–source integrity. The point of an inline citation is to allow readers and other editors to see which part of the material is supported by the citation; that point is lost if the citation is not clearly placed. The distance between material and its source is a matter of editorial judgment, but adding text without clearly placing its source may lead to allegations of original research, of violations of the sourcing policy, and even of plagiarism.

Keeping citations close

Editors should exercise caution when rearranging or inserting material to ensure that text–source relationships are maintained. References should not be moved if doing so might break the text–source relationship.

If a sentence or paragraph is footnoted with a source, adding new material that is not supported by the existing source to the sentence/paragraph, without a source for the new text, is highly misleading if placed to appear that the cited source supports it. When new text is inserted into a paragraph, make sure it is supported by the existing or a new source. For example, when editing text originally reading

The sun is pretty big.

Notes

---

an edit that does not imply that the new material is supported by the same reference is

The sun is pretty big. The sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

Do not add other facts or assertions into a fully cited paragraph or sentence:

N

The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

Include a source to support the new information. There are several ways to write this, including:

Y

The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

Citation order

"Wikipedia:REFORDER" redirects here. For the RfC, see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 136 § RfC: AWB bot ref reordering.

There is no consensus for a specific ordering of citations, and editors should not edit-war over it, nor make mass changes of ordering to suit personal preferences. In particular, references need not be moved solely to maintain the numerical order of footnotes as they appear in the article.

Bundling citations

Main page: Help:Citation merging

See also: Help:Shortened footnotes § Bundling citations, and Wikipedia:Citation overkill

Sometimes the article is more readable if multiple citations are bundled into a single footnote. For example, when there are multiple sources for a given sentence, and each source applies to the entire sentence, the sources can be placed at the end of the sentence, like this: Or they can be bundled into one footnote at the end of the sentence or paragraph, like this:

Bundling is also useful if the sources each support a different portion of the preceding text, or if the sources all support the same text. Bundling has several advantages:

• It helps readers and other editors see at a glance which source supports which point, maintaining text–source integrity;
• It avoids the visual clutter of multiple clickable footnotes inside a sentence or paragraph;
• It avoids the confusion of having multiple sources listed separately after sentences, with no indication of which source to check for each part of the text, such as this.
• It makes it less likely that inline citations will be moved inadvertently when text is re-arranged, because the footnote states clearly which source supports which point.

To concatenate multiple citations for the same content into a single footnote, there are several layouts available, as illustrated below:

The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

Use {{Unbulleted list citebundle}}:

Use an inline paragraph:

Use a bullet list:

This last approach needs an introductory line like "Multiple sources:" to prevent an unwanted linebreak after the footnote number.

Simply using line breaks to separate list items breaches MOS:Accessibility § Nobreaks: "<br /> line breaks ... should not be used." {{Unbulleted list citebundle}} a.k.a. {{Multiref}} was made specifically for this purpose. Some other templates in the same vein are listed at the disambiguation page Template:Multiple references.

Within a given article only a single layout should generally be used, except that inline may always be appropriate for shortened references, often all for the same statement:

In-text attribution

Further information: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view § Attributing and specifying biased statements, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Point of view

In-text attribution is the attribution inside a sentence of material to its source, in addition to an inline citation after the sentence. In-text attribution may need to be used with direct speech (a source's words between quotation marks or as a block quotation); indirect speech (a source's words modified without quotation marks); and close paraphrasing. It may also be used when loosely summarizing a source's position in your own words, and it should always be used for biased statements of opinion. For certain frequently discussed sources, in-text attribution is always recommended. It avoids inadvertent plagiarism and helps the reader see where a position is coming from. An inline citation should follow the attribution, usually at the end of the sentence or paragraph in question.

For example:

N To reach fair decisions, parties must consider matters as if behind a veil of ignorance.

Y John Rawls argues that, to reach fair decisions, parties must consider matters as if behind a veil of ignorance.

Y John Rawls argues that, to reach fair decisions, parties must consider matters as if "situated behind a veil of ignorance".

When using in-text attribution, make sure it doesn't lead to an inadvertent neutrality violation. For example, the following implies parity between the sources, without making clear that the position of Darwin is the majority view:

N Charles Darwin says that human beings evolved through natural selection, but John Smith writes that we arrived here in pods from Mars.

Y Humans evolved through natural selection, as first explained in Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.

Neutrality issues apart, there are other ways in-text attribution can mislead. The sentence below suggests The New York Times has alone made this important discovery:

N According to The New York Times, the sun will set in the west this evening.

Y The sun sets in the west each evening.

It is preferable not to clutter articles with information best left to the references. Interested readers can click on the ref to find out the publishing journal:

N In an article published in The Lancet in 2012, researchers announced the discovery of the new tissue type.

Y Researchers announced the new tissue type in 2012.

Simple facts such as this can have inline citations to reliable sources as an aid to the reader, but normally the text itself is best left as a plain statement without in-text attribution:

Y By mass, oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen and helium.

Dealing with unsourced material

If an article has no references at all, then:

• If the entire article is patent nonsense, tag it for speedy deletion using criterion G1.
• If the article is a biography of a living person, it can be tagged with {{subst:prod blp}} to propose deletion. If it's a biography of a living person and is an attack page, then it should be tagged for speedy deletion using criterion G10, which will blank the page.
• If the article doesn't fit into the above two categories, then consider finding references yourself, or commenting on the article talk page or the talk page of the article creator. You may also tag the article with the {{unreferenced}} template and consider nominating it for deletion.

For individual claims in an article not supported by a reference:

• If the article is a biography of a living person, then any contentious material must be removed immediately: see Biographies of living persons. If the material lacking reference is seriously inappropriate, it may need to be hidden from general view, in which case request admin assistance.
• If the material added appears to be false or an expression of opinion, remove it and inform the editor who added the unsourced material. The {{uw-unsourced1}} template may be placed on their talk page.
• In any other case consider finding references yourself, or commenting on the article talk page or the talk page of the editor who added the unsourced material. You may place a {{citation needed}} or {{dubious}} tag against the added text.

Citation templates and tools

Further information: Wikipedia:Citation templates and Help:Citation tools

For a comparison of citations using templates with citations written freehand, see Wikipedia:Citing sources/Example edits for different methods § Footnotes.

Citation templates can be used to format citations in a consistent way. The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged: an article should not be switched between templated and non-templated citations without good reason and consensus – see "Variation in citation methods", above.

If citation templates are used in an article, the parameters should be accurate. It is inappropriate to set parameters to false values to cause the template to render as if it were written in some style other than the style normally produced by the template (e.g., MLA style).

Metadata

Citations may be accompanied by metadata, though it is not mandatory. Most citation templates on Wikipedia use the COinS standard. Metadata such as this allow browser plugins and other automated software to make citation data accessible to the user, for instance by providing links to their library's online copies of the cited works. In articles that format citations manually, metadata may be added manually in a span, according to the COinS specification.

See also

How to cite

• Wikipedia:References dos and don'ts – a concise summary of some of the most important guidance on this page
• Help:Referencing for beginners – a simple practical guide to getting started
• Help:How to mine a source – case study on getting maximum information from cited material
• Wikipedia:Verification methods – listing examples of the most common ways that citations are used in Wikipedia articles
• Wikipedia:Improving referencing efforts – essay on why references are important
• Wikipedia:Citation templates – a full listing of various styles for citing all sorts of materials
• Wikipedia:Citing sources/Example edits for different methods – showing comparative edit mode representations for different citation methods and techniques
• Wikipedia:Citing sources/Further considerations – additional considerations for citing sources
• Wikipedia:Inline citation – more information on inline citations
• Wikipedia:Nesting footnotes – how-to guide on "nesting" footnotes
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout § Further reading – for information about the "Further reading" section
• Wikipedia:External links – for information about the "External links" section
• Wikipedia:Plagiarism § Public-domain sources – guideline covering the inclusion of material in the public domain
• Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines – guidelines for dealing with scientific and mathematical articles
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Shared Resources – project guide on finding resources
• MediaWiki:Extension:Cite – details of the software which support the <ref> parser hooks

Citation problems

• Template:Irrelevant citation – inline template to note source simply is not relevant to the material
• Template:More citations needed – template to add to article (or section) where citations are insufficient
• Template:Text-source – template to add to article (or section) where text–source integrity is questioned
• Wikipedia:Citation needed – explanation of template to tag statements that need a citation
• Wikipedia:Citation overkill – why too many citations on one fact can be a bad thing
• Wikipedia:Copyright problems – in case of text that has been copied verbatim inappropriately
• Wikipedia:Link rot – guide to preventing link rot
• Wikipedia:More seasoning doesn't mean more flavor – an essay about how less detail doesn't always mean less info
• Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue – an essay advising: do not cite already obvious information
• Wikipedia:You do need to cite that the sky is blue – an essay advising: just because something appears obvious to you does not mean it is obvious to everyone
• Wikipedia:Video links – an essay discussing the use of citations linking to YouTube and other user-submitted video sites
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Citation cleanup – a group of people devoted to cleaning up citations
• Wikipedia:Reference database – essay/proposal

Changing citation style formats

• WP:CITEVAR

Further reading

• "Online Style Guide". New Oxford Style Manual. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 2016. ISBN 978-0-19-876725-1.
• The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2017. ISBN 978-0-226-28705-8.
• "Academic Writing: Citing Sources". Writers Workshop. University of Illinois.
• "Citation Style Guides & Management Tools". Library Guides. LIU Post.
• "Citing: Help & how-to". Concordia University Library.
• "Citation Help". Subject Guides. University of Iowa.
• "Guide to Citation Style Guides". Journalism Resources. University of Iowa.
• "Library: Citing Sources & Citation Generators". Capital Community College.
• "Research and Citation Resources". Online Writing Lab. Purdue University.
• "The Writer's Handbook: Documentation". Writing Center. University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• "ACS Style Guide". Research Guides. University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• "Samples of Formatted References for Authors of Journal Articles". MEDLINE and PubMed: The Resources Guide. United States National Library of Medicine. 26 April 2018.

External links

• "reFill". Toolforge. WP:ReFill. – tool that expands bare references semi-automatically
• Wikipedia editing basics: Citing sources (part 1) (YouTube). Wikimedia Foundation.
• Wikipedia editing basics: Citing sources (part 2) (YouTube). Wikimedia Foundation.

offered within the tag, I still cannot bridge the gap between citation and resources within an article (and the definition that is clearly given) and that of external links. 

The original poster of this tag placed it there because of the external link section as was stated. The poster who reinstated it wrote that there are actually bare URLS in this article, which often lead to link rot. Yet does not offer to fix them or explain them on the talk page. I consider both to be "drive-by" taggings. Wikiguardpatrol (talk) 17:56, 3 April 2013 (UTC)