Help:Referencing for beginners/sandbox

Welcome to Wikipedia, the Referencing for beginners is designed to help you put references in your text, or add missing references to existing text. While there are many types of referencing system in use on Wikipedia, only about four are now in common use. There are many types of beginner, who start in many ways. This page will help you recognise the referencing system that is the most appropriate for your editing context. It will give practical examples, then move on to help you understand the rules we all follow, and what makes a good reference.

Referencing is one of the core principles of wikipedia. For every fact typed into Wikipedia there should be a link to say where the information came from. The Wikipedia software then displays the reference neatly at the bottom of the article. Academics are familiar with [footnotes and citations in their professional journals- this is almost the same.

Absolute basics

 * Keyboard skills: Many people use the keyboard without ever having a formal lesson. Copy and pasting can be done by highlighting the text and using to copy,  to paste and  to undo mistakes.

With the all of the text in that section is highlighted and  will copy it. The is the "yes! I was right " key. It is a redo button, re-doing what you removed with, This saves so much time.
 * A tag: We make Wikipedia do special things by placing some code between tags.  is just a tag that makes the footnote magically appear in the proper place. There are toolbars to help placing standard information within the  tags.
 * The editor: The editor can be used to type in text in the normal way. It can do a lot more. At the top, the opens a new toolbar- the RefToolbar- which should always be open as it is so useful. At the bottom there are many useful "Extra characters", set the choice button to : you can choose to insert  ,   or   into your text with a single click.

Basic manual markup
References appear at the bottom of the article in a nicely rendered list. This is sometimes called the notes, footnotes, bibliography or citations. However the reference itself is embedded in the text using the tags, freetext. It goes immediately after the punctuation without a space. {{pre| ==Article section== This is the text that you are going to verify with a reference.

Using ready prepared cite templates (found in the editor reftool bar)
Referencing is very important to Wikipedia and series of citation templates have been written to assist in writing the text that goes in the  pairs. This ensures that the references displayed\ in the are rendered to a consistent way. They can be written by hand- but normally are generated using a pop up tool called refToolbar. There are two important caveats: refToolbar does not help you edit existing citations only new ones, the refToolbar found on one user's Wikipedia may be different from his neighbour's depending on preferences that each user can set. The default version is refToolbar (Version 2.0b).

Using refToolbar (Version 2.0b)
The refToolbar prompts the editor to provide the information needed. It also has the ability to automatically fill in bibliographic data for many published books just using an ISBN, and academic journal or medical journal articles from a reference number, which reduces error-prone and tedious cut-and-pasting or retyping.

Click on the play button on the image to the right to view a refToolbar 2.0b video tutorial on how to use the citation dialog.

Citations in the body text

 * If you don't see a drop-down menu labeled on the toolbar above the edit window, click on "MediaWiki Vector skin right arrow.png Cite " at the top of the toolbar to activate refToolbar.
 * Position the cursor in the text where you want the numbered link to your citation to appear. This should be at the end of the relevant phrase, sentence, or paragraph that the citation is verifying (after any punctuation, see MOS:REFPUNC for more information).
 * Do not position the cursor at the very end of the article or in the  section
 * — place it directly after the text the citation verifies.✅


 * Click on the drop down menu labeled, and choose the citation type you would like to add ("cite web" for websites, "cite news" for newspaper articles, "cite book" for books, and "cite journal" for academic journals).
 * Once you select a type of citation, a new window will appear with a number of blank fields to fill in. Fill in as many of the fields as you can. You may leave some fields blank, but make sure to at least provide a "Title" to avoid causing an error message when you save the page.
 * Websites: When citing from a website, make sure to enter the web address of the page in the "URL" field. Click on the Nuvola_apps_date.svg button next to the "Access Date" field to indicate that you checked the information on the website you're citing today.
 * Book: When citing from a book, there is a feature that will automatically fill in many of the information fields, avoiding manual entry of this data. ]If you can find the ISBN of the book, enter it into the ISBN field in the form, then click on the System-search.svg icon to its right. The software will look up the book information from a database on the Internet, and automatically fill in many of the fields for you. You should verify that the information is correct, since it sometimes is wrong, incomplete, or badly formatted (especially if there are multiple authors). You should also add page numbers or other information if available.
 * Journals: When citing from a journal, a similar feature can use the PMID for many medical journal articles, or DOI for academic journals.
 * Once you have filled in the form, you can optionally click the button at the bottom to see the code that will be inserted. If you then click on the "Show parsed preview" link under the code you will see the citation displayed as it would appear in the finished article.
 * When you are satisfied with the information in the citation form, clicking the button will close the form and add the code for your citation to the edit window at the location you had selected prior to choosing a citation type. This information will show up as a superscript numbered link when you preview or save your edit.

When your edit is saved, the text of citations within the body of the article will automatically appear in the References section. References added using the refToolbar can still be edited manually after they are added; details on how to manually create or edit references are discussed in the Manual Referencing section, in a later section.

Citations for "Further reading" section
The refToolbar method can also be used to conveniently build correct citations for a "Further reading" or "Bibliography" section of an article. Use the refToolbar as described above, and insert the citation in the further reading" section. Then : manually edit the newly-inserted Wikisource text to remove the tags to allow the citation to be displayed.

Freetext markup
Returning to basics, references are included so that the reader can verify the accuracy of the fact, but for asthetic reasons we require a consistent approach. Custom and practice dictates that the rendered result should resemble the Harvard citations described in the Chicago manual of style. Academics are very comfortable with this style and can easily type up or copy such a reference without the assistance of refToolbar. This method is the most flexible- and can cope with the most extreme variations in the data to be displayed, and allows for simple cut and pasting from on-line dissertations. In other cases refToolBar is quicker.

The References, notes, footnotes, bibliography or citations appear at the bottom of the article in a nicely rendered list. However the reference itself is embedded in the text using the tags, freetext. Expanding on the method already shown: {{pre| ==Article section==
 * This is the text that you are going to verify with a reference from a book.
 * This is the text that you are going to verify with a reference from a journal.
 * This is the text that you are going to verify with a reference from a website.

Citation templates
The cite templates used by refToolBar can be entered manually and edited later to add missing infomation. These are placed in the body text inside the  pair. This sort of formatting is preferred. Here are a selection:



Citation templates will be used for other forms references. They are powerful tools.

Same reference used more than once
The first time a reference appears in the article, you can give it a simple refname inside the first code. To avoid name collisions, you can use the author name followed by year of publication, or an abbreviated version of the title. If it will be used often, pick a unique, memorable, and easily-typed refname.


 * DETAILS OF REFERENCE

Subsequent times that you cite the same reference in the article, you can use this shortcut instead of re-typing it (take note of the "/" at the end):



You can then use the refname shortcut as many times as you want (but never forget the "/", or it will blank the rest of the section).

For an example article where there are three sources, and they are each referenced three times, see William Bowyer (artist). For more details see WP:REFNAME.

Basic method for citing many pages from one book (academic markup)
Based on existing text- but standardising format, and simplifying grammatic structure

Notes and references
The above method is simple and combines references and notes into one section. A refinement is to put the full details of the references in their own section headed "References", while the notes which apply to them appear in a separate section headed "Notes". The notes can be inserted in the main article text in an abbreviated form. To add the citation:

it will appear in the   at the end of the article. At the end of the article the mark-up is as follows:

==See also== ==Notes== ==References== * Full Citation 1 * Full Citation 2 * Full Citation n ==Further reading and external links==

The separation of "Notes" and "References" in this way is in line with scholarly works.

Footnotes, notes and references
A further refinement that is used by some scholarly editors is to use notes and footnotes. For example the article on Franz Kafka is referenced this way making use of two helpful templates. and. Throughout the article you add the reference so: or that is the name, year and page reference or author, second author, year and page references. The full citation, which is generated by the method above is added (without its reference tags) to the Bibliography section. is inserted in the text and will appear in the  This has many uses.

The last sections of the article provide the links for the references and the notes: they take this mark up. ==See also== ==Notes== ==References== ===Citations=== ===Bibliography=== * Full Citation 1 * Full Citation 2 * Full Citation n     ===Further reading=== * Further Citation 1 * Further Citation 2 * Further Citation n ==External links==

This method is useful when you are making many page references from a limited number of books. It relies on the Authors name and Publication year to make the links. Which ever system is used try to be consistent.

Using Wikipedia/media tools for references to modern books
There are a number of tools available to help with citation placement and formatting.

Yarkard
The Yarkard button generates a citation from a ISBN, DOI or URL. It does a similar job to ISBN-autofill on some RefToolbar templates.
 * Setting up your computer:This tool lives in your browser (Firefox, Opera, Crome). To set it up you need to find the Yarkard ISBN expander page, press Ctrl-D to set it as a bookmark. In the dialog, you are give the choice of where to put it, choose the toolbar, and what to call it, choose something short like ISBN-sfn. When you need it- it is ready.
 * Using Yarkard: Click on the button, a screen opens- and you type the ISBN, DOI or URL into the box and click . A named reference or a sfn reference pair is transfered into the page by the standard copy and paste technique.
 * Other Tools: Re-Fill and Ref-links edit references by adding basic information to bare URLs in citations. Wikipedia tool for Google Books converts a long Google Books URL into a filled-out cite book template which is pasted into an article.

Inserting a reference
Generally sources are added directly after the facts they support at the end of the sentence and after any punctuation. Wikipedia permits editors to use any citation system that allows the reader to understand where the information came from, and strongly encourages use of inline citations to do so. Common methods of placing inline citations include footnotes, shortened footnotes, and parenthetical references.

Good references
A citation to a reference must verify the statement in the text. To verify the statement "Mike Brown climbed Mt. Everest", you cannot rely on a general reference about Mt. Everest or a reference on Mike Brown. You need to cite a source that directly supports the statement about his achievement.

You must use reliable sources, such as published books and mainstream press publications. ✅

Blogs, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, SoundCloud, fan sites, and extreme minority texts are not usually acceptable, nor is original research (e.g. your own unpublished, or self-published, essay or research), or another Wikipedia article.

If the reference source is a lengthy book, paper, or article, you should give specific chapter, section, or page numbers if possible, to save the reader from having to search the entire document.

Date format
These formats are preferred for dates:


 * 27 January 2007
 * January 27, 2007
 * 2007-01-27

Refname rules
Generating refnames as suggested above is not difficult, but the complete rules are quite detailed. See: ref-name rules

Legacy methods
Based on existing text- but standardising format, and simplifying grammatic structure

Page references
A little used, and discouraged technique, allows you to add page numbers after the reference in a similar superscript format. The numbers are in the form of a comment and do not link anywhere. It is best avoided, but can be used if other editors have used on the same page. In a lengthy paper you can use the Refpage, or Rp to appends the page number(s) as a superscript after the usual reference superscript. For an example of how this is applied, see the article about Frank Oppenheimer. It can also be used to add simple comments such as

Good references
A citation to a reference must verify the statement in the text. To verify the statement "Mike Brown climbed Mt. Everest", you cannot rely on a general reference about Mt. Everest or a reference on Mike Brown. You need to cite a source that directly supports the statement about his achievement. You must use reliable sources, such as published books and mainstream press publications. Blogs, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, SoundCloud, fan sites, and extreme minority texts are not usually acceptable, nor is original research (e.g. your own unpublished, or self-published, essay or research), or another Wikipedia article. If the reference source is a lengthy book, paper, or article, you should give specific chapter, section, or page numbers if possible, to save the reader from having to search the entire document.

Inserting a reference
Generally sources are added directly after the facts they support at the end of the sentence and after any punctuation. Wikipedia permits editors to use any citation system that allows the reader to understand where the information came from, and strongly encourages use of inline citations to do so. Common methods of placing inline citations include footnotes, shortened footnotes, and parenthetical references.

The first thing you do is to make sure there is a section where the footnotes will appear. It usually exists; look for a section that contains either the tag or, to enable more complex formatting, the  reference template. In accordance with WP:LAYOUT standards, this section is usually titled "References", and goes toward the bottom of the page, below the "See also" section and above the "External links" section. If the section does not exist yet, click on the "Edit" tab to begin editing the page and enter this code in the appropriate place:

==References==

The next step is to put an actual reference in the text. There are three ways to do this:
 * Using refToolbar to fill out a form with the bibliographic information (requires JavaScript)
 * Manually typing in formatting code and bibliographic information
 * Using VisualEditor, an experimental tool that is being beta-tested for editing Wikipedia pages

Citations for "Further reading" section
The refToolbar method can also be used to conveniently build correct citations for a "Further reading" or "Bibliography" section of an article, which do not use numbered superscripts. Use the refToolbar as described above, and insert the citation. Then, manually edit the newly-inserted Wikisource text to remove the tags, to prevent the unwanted appearance of numbered superscripts.

Manual referencing
Once you have a section where the footnotes will appear, the next step is to put a reference in the text. Here is the code to do that. The code goes at the end of the relevant phrase, sentence, or paragraph to which the note refers (after any punctuation, and without a space before the beginning of the tag).


 * freetext

Whatever text, formatting, or templates you put in between these two tags will become visible in the "References" section as your reference.
 * Do not place content in tags after the  tag or  template — they belong in the body of the article, at the point that you want the link to the footnote to appear.

Information to include
You need to include sufficient information to enable readers to find your source. For an online newspaper source, it might look like this:

When uploaded, it appears as:
 * Plunkett, John. "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying", The Guardian, London, 27 October 2005. Retrieved on 27 October 2005.

Note the single square brackets around the URL and the article title. The format is: [http://URL "Title of article"] Make sure there is a space between the URL and the Title. This code results in the URL being hidden and the title showing as a link. Use double apostrophes on either side of the name of the newspaper (to generate italics) and quotation marks around the article title.

Double square brackets around the name of the newspaper create an internal link (a wikilink) to the Wikipedia article (if any) about the newspaper - not really necessary for a well-known paper. If such brackets are used, the apostrophes must go outside the brackets.

The date after The Guardian is the date the newspaper article was originally published—this is required information—and the date after "Retrieved on" is the date you accessed the website, which is not essential but can be useful for searching the web archive in case the link goes dead.

It is best to include the place of publication if it is not already part of the newspaper's name. This avoids possible confusion with other newspapers of the same name. In the example, there are other newspapers called The Guardian published in cities of the world other than London.

References not online
You can use sources which are not online, but which you have found in a library or elsewhere—in which case, leave out the information that is not relevant. The newspaper example above would be formatted like this:

After you add this information and save your edit, it appears as:
 * Plunkett, John. "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying", The Guardian, London, 27 October 2005.

Here is an example for a book:

After you add this information and save your edit, it appears as:
 * Charmley, John (2006). The Princess and the Politicians, p. 60. Penguin Books, London. ISBN 0140289712.

Make sure you put two apostrophes on either side of the title (to generate italics), rather than quotation marks.

Citation templates
Optionally, you may prefer to use a citation template to compile the details of the source. The template is placed between the ref tags, and you fill out the fields that you want to include. Such templates automatically format punctuation and other markup such as italics and quotation marks.

Basic citation templates can be found here: Template messages/Sources of articles/Citation quick reference.

Using VisualEditor
If you prefer to use VisualEditor, you can use that to add the references. VisualEditor is an experimental way to edit pages without needing to learn wikitext markup, but is in the beta testing stages, currently does not work with all Internet Explorer versions, and has a number of known limitations. You can use VisualEditor by logging-in, checking the feature and pressing save.

The video to the right demonstrates how to use VisualEditor to add a citation template, which formats your references for you. You can also insert a plain-text citation using this method.

Position your cursor after the sentence or paragraph that the citation is intended to support. Click the "Reference" icon in the VisualEditor toolbar. A dialog will appear, with a text box in which you can either insert a plain citation or a citation template. If you want to insert a template, click the puzzle piece icon to bring up the templates dialog. Type "Cite" into the template text box, and a number of suggestions will be provided. Choose the appropriate template, and add as many parameters as you can easily fill.

Same reference used more than once
The first time a reference appears in the article, you can give it a simple refname inside the first code. To avoid name collisions, you can use the author name followed by year of publication, or an abbreviated version of the title. If it will be used often, pick a unique, memorable, and easily-typed refname.


 * <ref >DETAILS OF REFERENCE</ref>

Subsequent times that you cite the same reference in the article, you can use this shortcut instead of re-typing it (take note of the "/" at the end):



You can then use the refname shortcut as many times as you want (but never forget the "/", or it will blank the rest of the section).

For an example article where there are three sources, and they are each referenced three times, see William Bowyer (artist). For more details see WP:REFNAME.

Page references
If the repeatedly-used reference is a book or a lengthy paper or article, it is very helpful to have separate page references for specific facts. To avoid excessive repetition of standard bibliographic information for each different page reference, you can use the Template:Refpage, which appends the page number(s) as a superscript after the usual reference superscript. For an example of how this is applied, see the article about Frank Oppenheimer. -->