User:Peter coxhead/Citation Tool Help

Introduction
The Citation Tool is designed to support the approach to referencing exemplified in, e.g., the article James Eustace Bagnall.


 * All citations which have one or more authors and a year are placed in a list (under a heading like 'References and Bibliography'), using the template.
 * When the citation is in this list, then the ref element in the article contains only a Harvard style reference, e.g..

This produces two links:


 * The raised index in the article has a two-way link to the Harvard-style ref in the References list.
 * The name(s) and year in the Harvard-style ref has a one-way link to the citation. This works because the wiki software automatically adds identifiers when expanding { {Citation}} and . However, the names must match precisely for this to work; the tool helps to achieve this.

Example
The article is written as follows.

Life
Mary Williams was a publisher.

Using the tool

 * Go to Citation Tool.


 * Choose from one of four kinds of citation: book, contribution, journal or web. The tool does not support other kinds of citation. Contribution is used for cases when the referenced item appears in a published work with a different title, e.g. an article in an encyclopedia, or a paper in published conference proceedings. Ideally the author of the item is known as well as the editors of the overall work.


 * Use the 'Style' checkboxes to choose whether to have '&amp;' between the last two authors/editors, and whether to use full stops between items in the citation (the default is commas).


 * Fill in the fields, then use the 'Create Citation and Ref' button. The results can be pasted into your Wikipedia article. As per the example above, the Citation goes in the last section, which I tend to call "References and Bibliography"; the Ref goes in the text.


 * The template only allows 4 explicitly listed authors. If there are more, enter them into the "coauthors" box which will appear if you try to  create 5 authors. You must then handle any "&" required yourself.


 * If there isn't sufficient information to create a Harvard style reference, only a Ref will be produced.


 * It's possible to work backwards. Paste an existing citation into the Citation box and press the 'Parse' button. This will try to re-create the source fields. You may need to add extra authors and/or editors. This can also be useful if you chose the wrong kind of citation: create as much of the citation as possible, then copy and paste it into the correct page.

The tool does not attempt to cover all possible fields in a citation.

Please report any errors or leave suggestions for improvement on the Talk page.