ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ:Referencing for beginners

The text of this page can be put on user or article talk pages by writing: {{subst:refstart}}.

References (refs) on Wikipedia are important to validate writing and inform the reader. Any editor can remove unreferenced material; and unsubstantiated articles may end up getting deleted, so when something is added to an article, it's highly advisable to also include a reference to say from where it came. Referencing may look daunting, but it's easy enough to do. Here's a guide to getting started.

Good references

A reference must be accurate, i.e. it must prove the statement in the text. To validate "Mike Brown climbed Everest", it's no good linking to a page about Everest, if Mike Brown isn't mentioned; nor to one on Mike Brown, if it doesn't say that he climbed Everest. You have to link to a source that proves the statement about his achievement is true. You must use reliable sources, such as published books, mainstream press, and authorized web sites. Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, fan sites and extreme minority texts are not usually acceptable, nor is original research (e.g. your own unpublished, or self-published, essay or research), or another Wikipedia article.

Inserting a reference

Wikipedia allows editors to use any citation system that allows the reader to understand from where the information came. Common choices include footnotes, parenthetical references, and inline URLs. This page will show you how to use the footnotes approach:

The first thing you do is to make sure there is a section where the footnotes will appear. It may already exist: look for a section that contains either the <references /> or the {{reflist}} reference tag. This section goes toward the bottom of the page, below the "See also" section and above the "External links" section, and is usually titled "References". Enter this code:

==References==

<references />

The next step is to put a reference in the text. Here is the code to do that. The code goes at the end of the relevant phrase, sentence, or paragraph to which the note refers. (If there is a space between the end of the phrase, sentence or paragraph and the beginning of the <ref>, then normal line wrap may cause the resulting numbered footnote to be separated from the text.)

<ref> </ref>

Whatever text, formatting, or templates you put in between these two tags will become visible in the "References" section as your reference.

Test it out

Open the edit box for your user talk page (Ctrl+Click), copy the following text (inserting your own text where indicated), paste it at the bottom of the page, and save the page:

==Reference test==

This is the text which you are going to verify with a reference.<ref>Reference details go here</ref>==References==

<references />

(End of text to copy and paste.)

When you save the page, you should see this on your screen:

Reference testThis is the text which you are going to verify with a reference.^[1]References1. ^Reference details go here

You can also use the Wikipedia:Sandbox for test edits like this.

References not online

You can use sources which are not online, but which you have found in a library or elsewhere—in which case, leave out the information that is not relevant. The newspaper example above would be formatted like this:

<ref>Plunkett, John. "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying", ''[[The Guardian]]'', London, 27 October 2005.</ref>

After you add this information and save your edit, it appears as:

Plunkett, John. "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying", The Guardian, London, 27 October 2005.

Here is an example for a book:

<ref>Charmley, John (2006). ''The Princess and the Politicians'', p. 60. Penguin Books, London. ISBN 0140289712.</ref>

After you add this information and save your edit, it appears as:

Charmley, John (2006). The Princess and the Politicians, p. 60. Penguin Books, London. ISBN 0140289712.

Make sure you put two single quotation marks round the title (to generate italics), rather than one double quote mark.

Date format

These formats are preferred for dates:

27 January 2007

January 27, 2007

2007-01-27 (ISO 8601: international standard and interlingually unambiguous)

Citation templates

Optionally, you may prefer to use a citation template to compile the details of the source. The template is placed between the ref tags, and you fill out the fields that you want to include.

Basic citation templates can be found here: Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles/Citation quick reference.

Same reference used more than once

The first time a reference appears in the article, you can give it a simple name in the <ref> code:

<ref name="smith">DETAILS OF REF</ref>

Subsequent times that you use the same reference in the article, you can use a shortcut instead of re-typing it:

You can then use the shortcut as many times as you want. Don't forget the /, or it will blank the rest of the article. Some symbols don't work in the ref name, but you'll find out if you use them. Each reference on a single page must have a unique name.

You can see multiple use of the same references in action in the article William Bowyer (artist). There are three sources, and they are each referenced three times. Each statement in the article has a footnote to show its source.

Alternative system

The above method is simple and combines references and notes into one section. A refinement is to put the full details of the references in their own section headed "References", while the notes which apply to them appear in a separate section headed "Notes". The notes can be inserted in the main article text in an abbreviated form as seen in this version of the article Harriet Arbuthnot or in a full form as in this version of the article Brown Dog affair. The separation of "Notes" and "References" in this way is in line with scholarly works.