Help:Cite

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The 'cite' feature allows you to add footnotes and references to articles, like this.

How to use it
To create a footnote or reference, simply switch to source mode while editing and then place your text inside   tags. In source mode, the first sentence on this page would look like this:


 * The 'cite' feature allows you to add footnotes and references to articles, like this. 

At the end of the page create a references, footnotes, or citations section and include the code '''. You can then refer to the same footnote again by using a ref tag with the same name. Note: the name cannot be a number, or it will return an error.

Only the first occurrence of text in a named ref will be used, although that occurrence may be located anywhere in the article. For legibility, putting the full footnote first is recommended.

For subsequent identical references, use a self-closing empty ref tag that looks like this:.

When deleting content with footnotes, make sure you do not delete the named citation which holds all the reference information. This will result in an error for all the other footnotes depending on it. Remember to copy the  to one of the identical references.

Grouped references
To separate different kinds of references into individual lists, use. Once you have multiple references in the same group, use  to list only the references in that group. In this fashion, you can separate a special type of reference from the rest.

Citation needed!
Some communities use a template to flag information that need citations. Often that means adding  or   just after the text in question.

To create one of these templates, start a new page called Template:Fact. Switch to source mode, and use the following code:



...which will create [citation needed].

More fun with citations
Eventually, you may want to create templates specifically for use within references to keep order - for example, a template for web addresses, another for book references.

Finally, you may wish to customise the references list design itself, such as giving it two columns or reducing the text size slightly. This can be done effectively with CSS, using the  class as a selector.

Citation templates
If your community deals with an academic subject, you may wish to have default citation templates. The non-Lua versions of these templates can be found on w:c:psiepsilon:Template:Cite book and w:c:psiepsilon:Template:Cite journal.

Next steps

 * Creating Links
 * Templates