User:Alex Kyrios/Citations

If you want to write out your citations by hand like you would for a paper, that's fine. But it's much easier to take advantage of some of Wikipedia's built-in templates that will automatically build citations for you if you just feed in some information. To cite a source for a particular sentence, add <ref></ref> at the end of the sentence, after the punctuation. Then plug in one of the templates from the list below between <ref> and </ref> and fill in the information as necessary. For example, writing <ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lib.uidaho.edu |title=University of Idaho Library |publisher=University of Idaho |accessdate=October 23, 2013}}</ref> will produce:

Many articles already have reference sections. If you're adding the first citation to an article, you may have to add a References section. It's as easy as adding this:

==References==
{{reflist}}

A References section should go after the main text of the article, after a See also section and before an External links section (not all articles will have these either). Without a References section in place, the system won't know where to display citations, and you'll get an error message.

Templates

• Book source: {{cite book |last= |first= |date= |title= |url= |location= |publisher= |page= |pages= |isbn= |accessdate=October 23, 2013}}
• Journal source: {{cite journal |last= |first= |last2= |first2= |date= |title= |url= |journal= |publisher= |volume= |issue= |pages= |doi= |accessdate=October 23, 2013}}
• Magazine source: {{cite journal |last= |first= |date= |title= |url= |journal= |location= |publisher= |accessdate=October 23, 2013}}
• Thesis/dissertation: {{cite thesis |last= |first= |title= |type= |chapter= |url= |author= |year= |publisher= |accessdate=October 23, 2013 |oclc=}}
• Web source: {{cite web |url= |title= |last1= |first1= |last2= |first2= |date= |website= |publisher= |accessdate=October 23, 2013}}

Note: accessdate is only important for electronic sources, which can change over time. If you're citing a print book, journal, etc., don't include this or a URL.

Need to cite another kind of source? Just ask for help.