Wikipedia:Verification methods

These examples show several common methods that Wikipedia editors use to make their articles verifiable. Wikipedia editors are free to use any of these methods, or to develop newer methods—no particular method is preferred. However some method is required and each article must use the same method throughout the entire article. (When making changes to an article that already has sources, an editor should study the method already in use.)

This article is only intended to provide examples and give a rough introduction to the methods in use. This article does not debate their respective merits or consider any precise technical details. For this information, please see other guides such as: Citing sources, Citation templates, Footnotes and Harvard references.

Temporary references
It is more important to provide some kind of source than to format the source perfectly. Later editors can easily fix a badly formatted citation, but they will find it difficult or impossible to do the research necessary to find a source for a random bit of material added to an article. Newer editors may use any means necessary to provide a source for the material they bring to Wikipedia. These examples require almost no knowledge of Wikipedia's special characters or markup language, and no knowledge at all of proper citation formats.
 * A book: add the authors name, the book's title, year of publication and the page number that the material comes from. The year is important since it establishes which edition of the book was used.
 * A website: provide the URL (in brackets) of the particular webpage on which this material appears.

General references section
Many articles have a list of references (i.e. a bibliography) at the end of the article. The references are assumed to verify material throughout the article. This section should contain full citations. For information on how to write proper citations for journals, web sites, newspaper articles, and other sources (without using templates) see Citing sources.

Example 2: Using citation templates
This example uses citation templates to format the references. Templates (such as cite book or citation) are not essential, but many editors find them useful. For more information on using citation templates, see Citation templates.

Full citations in footnotes
Many articles verify the text by placing the citation in a footnote. This is a method of inline citation. Inline citations allow a direct connection between the source and the text it verifies. See Footnotes for information on using footnotes.

Articles that use full references in footnotes: 7 World Trade Center · Acrocanthosaurus · Acetic acid · Aggie Bonfire · 35 mm film · Ahmedabad · 1981 Irish hunger strike · Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act · 200 (Stargate SG-1) · 1987 · Apollo 8 · 1080° Snowboarding · 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack · Flag of Armenia · Aldol reaction · ASCII · Azerbaijani people · 1933 Atlantic hurricane season · Al-Kateb v Godwin · 300 (film), · Alanya · Archimedes · Asteroid belt · Aikido · Ben Gurion International Airport · 3D Monster Maze. · Ace Books These articles also have additional general references: Eagle Scout · €2 commemorative coins · Acorn Computers · Absinthe · 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane · Aramaic language · 1896 Summer Olympics · Mumia Abu-Jamal · Michel Foucault · Anarcho-capitalism · Algerian civil war

Example 3: using cite.php with citation templates
This example uses cite book templates to format the full citations and reflist to format the footnotes. This is the most common implementation in Wikipedia, used in millions of articles.

Example 4: using cite.php with handwritten inline citations
Some editors prefer to format the citation by hand.

Example 5: using cite.php with list defined references
This example uses a method that was introduced in the summer of 2009 and is used in a few articles.

Example 6: using Ref and Note
Many older articles use the templates Ref and Note. This referencing style has been largely replaced by the use of and reflist (or reflist-talk, for talk pages).

Short citations in footnotes
These are used for articles that have multiple references different pages of the same source.

Articles that use page references in footnotes: An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump · Conatus · The Age of Reason · History of artificial intelligence · Chinese Room · Georg Cantor · Ælle of Sussex · Alpha Kappa Alpha · 1880 Republican National Convention · Adi Shankara · Áedán mac Gabráin · Abbey Theatre · 0.999... · BC Rail · Black pepper · Alpha Phi Alpha · Bengali language

Example 9: Using citation templates to create a link
This example uses Harvnb and Citation templates to format the citation and automatically create a link between the author-date in the footnote and the full reference in the references section. This method is used in about 15,000 articles.

Example 10: Using sfn
Sfn is a new template introduced in the summer of 2009. Several thousand articles use it to create shortened footnotes. {| class=wikitable
 * - valign="top"
 * Article
 * This material comes from a book.

This is more material from that book.

This material comes from a different book.

This material comes from the same page of the second book.

This is a point that needs clarification.

References and footnotes in separate sections
Some articles separate footnotes used for verification and footnotes used for clarification.

Articles that use this style include: Action potential, Ammolite, Alpha Phi Alpha, Archimedes

Example 11
Editors have used many methods to achieve this effect. This example uses the "group" parameter of. Other articles use the templates ref label and note label.