User:Melicans/Referencing tips

When I spoke to Professor Zelenski at the beginning of the semester, he told me he would be away for the week 4 class. Seeing how the in-class Wikipedia topic for the week is Referencing (which can at times be a little tricky to do, especially when you are just starting out), I volunteered to write up a brief summary/guide for you on what you need, and how to do it. So here it is; I hope that it is helpful to you!

Starting out
Of course, the first thing you need to be able to reference an article are the sources themselves! Luckily, through the University, you have access to a wide range of sources you can use thanks to the library, such as books and journal articles that you may not otherwise to able to view without subscribing to the publication or database.

To start integrating your sources into an article, you need a very important bit of code. At the very end of the article create a section for References like such:
 * ==References==

Underneath this heading is where you need to put the code. You have a few options available to you, most of them based on Reflist. They are, , , and. is the default option: it will create a single column of footnotes from the references you include in the article text. Adding the Vertical bar ( | )and the number 2 or 3 afterwards will split the references into a list of two or three columns, depending on what number you choose and what browser you use (if you use Internet Explorer, for example, adding |2 will still show as just a single column. My personal preference is to use |colwidth=30em . This allows references to be displayed in the best manner for the browser, whether it is one, two, or three columns. When you add this code, you will have typed something looking like this:
 * ==References==

Saving this simple code will cause all of your references throughout the article to be displayed at the bottom of the page.

How about a bibliography?
Books, because of their length, are often cited numerous times in the same article, sometimes with spans of several hundred pages depending on how thoroughly it covers the article topic.

Final note
If you browse through enough Wikipedia articles, you'll see that not all Reference sections are labelled as such. Though most are labelled 'References', some are called 'Notes' or 'Footnotes'. Some articles include the Bibliography under the main reference list (as demonstrated above and in the handout I'll give you in Week 5 if the weather prevented you from attending Week 4), and others have it as a separate section either above or below the References section. There is no right way to do it; everybody's preference is different. As long as you have an easily identifiable References section at the bottom of the page, it doesn't matter if you call it References, Notes, or Footnotes. It also doesn't matter how you include the Bibliography section (though you will need one if you cite any books). So play around and see what style you like best for your article choice. It doesn't matter how you have it, just so long as you do have it!

Redundant after posting
Hi everyone. It was good to see some of you in the classroom yesterday despite the abysmal road and weather conditions. I hope you all kept safe during the worst of it. When I spoke to Professor Zelenski early in the month, he told me he would be away for the week 4 class. Seeing how the in-class Wikipedia topic for the week is Referencing (which can at times be a little tricky to do, especially when you are just starting out), I volunteered to write up a brief summary/guide for you on what you need, and how to do it. So here it is; I hope that it is helpful to you!