Wikipedia:WikiProject Public art/IndianaStatehouse/References

This page offers tips on how to create citations within Wikipedia. If you are looking for the BIG BIBLIOGRAPHY click the link. Emtrix (talk) 19:41, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

A Quick Breakdown
Lori just passed on this summary of referencing in an article. It maybe a nice cheatsheet to keep in hand. Emtrix (talk) 18:45, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Shortcuts
Emily's printout will be a HUGE help to you when you start citing your sources. And as Bibliography Tsar, I am going to remind you to cite your sources. To make that easier, there was a trick I came across while playing around with citations...something I tried to share in class but will only make sense when you actually start to do it. If you don't believe how handy this is, take a look at any article's edit page and see all the crazy-extra "code" in there. It makes it hard to edit your article when you have to parse out your real words from your reference codes.

So when you cite a reference, you put all this (for example) in those squiggly brackets ():

cite encyclopedia|title=Kirkegaard, Ole Lund|editor last=Winkler Prins|editor first=Anthony|volume=9|publisher=Elsevier|year=1882

You have to sandwich all that with:

ref (in< >)....../ref (in < >)

And when you have one, two, three citations in ONE sentence, suddenly there are a lot of confusing words. Instead, sandwich your citation template with:

ref name="citation nickname (in< >)....../ref (in < >) The next time you use that reference, all you need to type then is and you'll be a much happier camper.

Feel free to ask me any questions you have. I also tried using that nifty tool that Richard showed us in class with the template that would pop up right in your edit page, but I found that it placed my citations everywhere BUT where I wanted them to go. So if anyone has instructions on how to use that, we would all have even less of a headache.

And don't forget, when you want to generate your final reference list all you should have to do is type reflist (in { }) under your References heading and cross your fingers. (Look at the edit page in this section and you can see all these codes in action down below.)

'''I am writing a verifiable fact about the Kirkegaard. Oh, and here is something else interesting about it!'''

Reference (Heading)
Hope that doesn't get too confusing. Good luck! Emtrix (talk) 14:26, 10 November 2010 (UTC)