Help:Citation Style 1: Difference between revisions

This guide needs improvement and expansion.

This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts WP:CS1 Help:CS1

Citation Style 1 (CS1) is a well-used method of referencing Wikipedia articles using a series of templates that in turn use the meta-template {{Citation/core}}. The use of a central template makes individual citation templates simpler to code and amend, and produces a consistent look throughout the encyclopedia.

The use of CS1 or of templates is not compulsory; per WP:CITEVAR:

Citations within each Wikipedia article should follow a consistent style. Editors may choose any style they want. The English Wikipedia does not have a house style, so it need not match what is done in other articles.

There are a number of templates that use a name starting with cite; many were developed independently of CS1 and are not compliant with the CS1 style. There are also a number of templates that use one of the general use templates as a meta-template to cite a specific source. Only general use templates that are fully compliant with CS1 are discussed here.

¹ Cite4Wiki uses {{Cite web}} by default, but has been customized to use {{Cite news}}, etc., for certain specific sources, and can be further customized in this manner.

The following templates use {{cite journal}} as a meta template. By simply entering an identifier, a bot will retrieve the citation information from a database and fill in the template.

CS1 uses a series of templates that provide a consistent output. The main difference is in parameters optimized for the subject. For example, {{cite book}} has fields for title and chapter, whereas {{cite journal}} has fields for journal and title.

This help page uses the names most commonly used across the templates series; see each template's documentation for details.

CS1 templates present a citation generally as:

• With author:

author (date). title. publisher. identifiers

• Without author:

title. publisher. date. identifiers

Authors and editors

Authors may be included by separate parameters for the given name and surname. A single or first author would use |last= and |first= and subsequent authors would use |last2= and |first2= through |last9= and |first9=. This method shows the name in last, first style:

Hardcastle, Gary L; Reisch, George A. Monty Python and Philosophy.

You may also use |author= through |author9= to include the full author name. This method is used when first last order style is used, the national or ethnic name style is not first last or an organizational author is used. This may not create the expected anchor for Shortened footnotes and parenthetical referencing.

If the author has a Wikipedia article, the author name can be linked with |authorlink= through |authorlink9=. This method is used because |last= and |first= does not allow a wikilink. This link is not for an external website and will render incorrectly if one is used. If the author is notable enough to have an article, then the website should be linked in that article's "External links" section.

Editors are added in the same manner using |editor-last= and |editor-first= through |editor-last4= and |editor-first4= and |editorlink= through |editorlink4=.

The use of authors modifies the display and order of the citation:

Hardcastle, Gary L; Reisch, George A (2006). Monty Python and Philosophy.

Monty Python and Philosophy. 2006.

By default, if nine authors are defined, then only eight will show and et al. will show in place of the last author. To change the number of authors, see Display options. If four editors are defined, then et al. will show in place of the last editor; there is no display option for editors.

If the source provides no author, as is common with newswire reporting and the internal pages of company websites, and the organizational author would be the same as the work/site/periodical, or the publisher, use:
     |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->
This HTML comment saves a lot of long-term Wikipedia editorial time by alerting fact-checking and citation-fixing editors (and bots) that the publisher source specifically did not name the author and that this information wasn't accidentally omitted from the citation here.

The main function of |author= being used for organizational citation is when the cited source, such as a committee report, specifically names an official body or a sub-unit (of the publisher as the collective author of the work, e.g. |author=Commission on Headphone Safety or |author=Rules Sub-committee. Using this parameter to assert what you think was probably the collective author, when the source itself does not specify that body as the collective author, is original research and falsification of source verifiability and reliability.

In particular, avoid citations like {{cite news|work=Weekday Times|author=Weekday Times editors|title=...}}, unless the article is on a field in which the majority of professionally published citations in journals on that field use such a redundant citation style.

Others

• others: Contributors other than author or editor; a description such as "Illustrated by Smith" or "Trans. Smith" may be included.

Dates

Dates are generally included by three parameters:

• date: Full date of publication edition being referenced, in the same format as other dates in citations in the same article. Must not be wikilinked.
• OR: year: Year of publication edition being referenced.
  • month: Name of the month of publication. If you also have the day, use date instead. Must not be wikilinked.
  • origyear: Original publication year, for display alongside the date or year. For clarity, please supply specifics, for instance origyear=First published 1859 or origyear=Composed 1904. This parameter only displays if there is a value for year or date.

It is important that |date= be used only for the full date; using a year only will create a malformed anchor when that feature is enabled.

Dates formats per WP:DATESNO:^{[Note 1]}

• Do not wikilink.
• Use month before day or day before month styles and use them consistently throughout the article.
• Access and archive dates in references should be in either the format used for publication dates, or YYYY-MM-DD.

Titles and chapters

Titles containing certain characters will display and link incorrectly unless those characters are replaced or encoded.

• title The title of the work. Generally displayed in italics, except for a short work such as {{cite press release}} and cited articles in {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}} and {{cite web}}, where it is shown in quotation marks. Should consistently use title case or sentence case throughout the article, and should use title case unless the article is on a scientific, legal or other technical topic in which sentence case is the predominant style in journals on that topic. Subtitles are typically separated from titles with ": ", though " – " is also used.

• chapter The chapter of the book, written in full. Displayed in quotes before the title. For websites arranged in sections the "at" parameter serves a similar function: |at="Featured News" section

• type: Specifies the type of work cited. Appears in parentheses immediately after the title. Some templates use a default that can be overridden; example: {{cite press release}} will show (Press release) by default.

• trans_title: If the book cited is in a foreign language, an English translation of the title can be given here. This field will be shown square brackets after the title and will be linked to |url= if used.

• trans_chapter: Will be displayed in square brackets within the quotation marks which enclose the chapter field.

Language

• language: The language the work is written in, if it is not English. Displayed before the title, enclosed in parentheses and prefixed with in. Do not use icons in this field.

Work and publisher

• work: Used by some templates such as {{cite web}}, {{cite news}} (where it also aliased as "newspaper" and "magazine"), {{cite journal}} (aliased to "journal"), and others where the citation is usually to a specific item in a larger work, most commonly an article in a website, magazine, newspaper or journal. Do not confuse this with the "publisher" parameter, which is for the publishing company. On websites, in most cases this is the name of the website (as usually given in the logo/banner area of the site), otherwise the site's domain name.

  If the titled item being cited is part of some other larger work, such as a book, periodical or organizational sub-site (e.g., the law school's section of a university's website system), it is usually better to use the name of that more specific work than that of the entire site. The inclusion of the top-level domain such as .com for Amazon.com is left to the editor unless it is part of the company name such as DVDEmpire.com.

• publisher: the name of the company that actually published the source. The field should not include the corporate designation such as "Ltd" or "Inc.", unless some ambiguity would result. It is left to editorial discretion whether to include it where it would be the same or mostly the same as the work, journal, magazine or the like; for example:

  |work=Amazon.com    and   |publisher=Amazon
|magazine=The New York Times    and   |publisher=The New York Times Company, which link to different articles.

  Many professional and academic citation standards do expect the publisher to be explicitly included, even where this may seem redundant. Adding it doesn't hurt anything, and eliminates the possibility that later editors will assume it was left out by mistake and waste time looking up the missing information.

• location: Geographical place of publication, usually City, Country, or City, U.S. State; simply the city name by itself can be used for world-recognized cities like New York, London (except in articles about Canadian topics), Paris, Tokyo, etc.

Pages

• page: page in the source that supports the content

• pages: pages in the source that supports the content; separate page ranges with an en dash (–); separate non-sequential pages with a comma

• at: For sources where a page number is inappropriate or insufficient; overridden by |page= or |pages=.
  • Examples: page (p.) or pages (pp.); section (sec.), column (col.), paragraph (para.); track; hours, minutes and seconds; act, scene, canto, book, part

Edition identifiers

• edition: When the source has more than one edition. E.g.: "2nd", "Revised" etc. The templates automatically displays " ed." after this parameter, so |edition=2nd produces "2nd ed."
• series: When the source is part of a series, such as a book series or a journal where the issue numbering has restarted.^{[Note 2]}
• volume: For a source published in several volumes. This field is displayed in bold after the title and series parameters. An alternative is to include the volume information in the title parameter after the main title.
• issue: When the source is one of a series that is published periodically.

Web links

• url: Adds a link to the title
• chapterurl: Adds a link to the chapter.
• format: Format of the document at its URL (e.g., PDF, xls, etc.) Don't specify for HTML (implied as default). Don't specify for PDF if the URL ends with ".pdf" or ".PDF", as that will be auto-detected. Do not use this parameter for completely different purposes, with values such as "fee required" and "reprint"; its intent is to notify readers what the file format is (e.g. in case their browsers might have trouble with it, or they would prefer to save it to disk than open it in the browser). Notes about access restrictions, reprintings, etc., should be placed after the template, and before </ref>.

Online sources

Links to sources are regarded as conveniences and are not required, except when citing Web-only sources. There are many digital libraries with works that may be used as sources.

• Links should be to full versions of the source.
• Online sources that require payment or subscription may be included per the verifiability policy.

Do not link to:

• Sites that do not have permission to republish the work or which otherwise violate copyright.
• Commercial sites such as Amazon.
• Reviews of the work.
• Very short extracts such as Google Books snippet view where there is not enough context to verify the content, unless the entire work is also freely available there.

Link formats

Links should be kept as simple as possible. For example, when performing a search for a Google Book, the link for Monty Python and Philosophy would look like:

http://books.google.com/books?id=wPQelKFNA5MC&lpg=PP1&dq=monty%20python&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

But can be trimmed to:

http://books.google.com/books?id=wPQelKFNA5MC

Pages

A direct link to a specific page may be used if supported by the host. For example, the link to page 173 of Monty Python and Philosophy on Google Books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=wPQelKFNA5MC&l&pg=PA173

If the same source is reused with different pages, separate citations must be created. A way around this problem is to use {{rp}} to provide linked page number citations.

Special characters

URLs containing certain characters will display and link incorrectly unless those characters are encoded. For example, a space must be replaced by %20.

Single apostrophes do not need to be encoded; multiples will be parsed as italic or bold markup

The link button on the enhanced editing toolbar will encode a link.

Access date

• accessdate: The date the web link was accessed; only shows when a link is included.

Icons

URLs with certain filename extensions or URI schemes will apply an icon specific to that file type. This is done through MediaWiki CSS, not these templates.

Web archives

• archiveurl
• archivedate

The original link may become unavailable. When an archived version is located, the original URL is retained and |archiveurl= is added with a link to an archived copy of a web page, usually from services like WebCite and the Internet Archive. |archivedate= must be added to show the date the page was archived, not the date the link was added. When |archiveurl= is used, |url= and |archivedate= are required, else an error will show. When an archived link is used, the citation displays with the title linked to the archive and the original link at the end:

"Monty Python and Philosophy". Archived from the original on October 12, 2011. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

• deadurl: To change the order with the title retaining the original link and the archive linked at the end, set |deadurl=no:

"Monty Python and Philosophy". Archived from the original on October 12, 2011. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

Identifiers

Most templates support these identifiers:

• arxiv: ArXiv
• asin: Amazon Standard Identification Number
• bibcode: Bibcode
• doi: Digital object identifier
  • doi_brokendate: Date the DOI is broken
  • doi_inactivedate: Sometimes the doi target link might not function (e.g. it is awaiting entry to the CrossRef database). Use this parameter, which takes a date argument, to de-link the DOI. The parameter will be removed when the DOI becomes active again. Must not be wikilinked. The doi value is still shown, but without a link, and the mainspace article is added to "Category:Pages with DOIs inactive since YYYY".
• id: A general identifier
• isbn: International Standard Book Number
• issn: International Standard Serial Number
• jfm: Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik
• jstor: JSTOR
• lccn: Library of Congress Control Number
• mr: Mathematical Reviews
• oclc: Online Computer Library Center
• ol: Open Library
• osti: Office of Scientific and Technical Information
• PMC: PubMed Central article number for full-text free repository of an article
• PMID: PubMed Unique Identifier
• rfc: Request for Comments
• ssrn: Social Science Research Network
• zbl: Zentralblatt MATH

Quote

• quote: Relevant text quoted from the source; enclosed in quotes. When supplied, the citation terminator (a period by default) is suppressed, so the quote needs to include terminating punctuation.

Anchors

• ref: Creates an anchor for use with Shortened footnotes and parenthetical referencing. These styles use in-text cites with a link that will jump to an anchor created by the CS1 template. Anchors are not enabled by default, they are created by use of |ref=

• |ref=harv: Creates an anchor of the format CITEREFauthorslastnameyear. Examples:

Hardcastle, Gary L. (2006). Monty Python and Philosophy. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Creates an anchor named CITEREFHardcastle2006.

Hardcastle, Gary L.; Reisch, George A. (2006). Monty Python and Philosophy. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Creates an anchor named CITEREFHardcastleReisch2006.

• |ref=ID: Creates a custom anchor defined by ID. This is useful where the author and/or date is unknown.

Display options

These features are not often used, but can customize the display for use with other styles.

• author-mask: Primarily intended for use in bibliographies for some styles where multiple works by a single author are listed. It replaces the name of the first author with a strike-thru dash (—) author-mask em in length. If |author-mask=1 then the dash will be one em in length and so on. Set author-mask to a text value to display a word instead:– for example, 'with'. You must still include the parameters for all authors for metadata purposes. Do not use in a list generated by {{reflist}} or <references /> as there is no control as to the order that references will display.

• author-separator: Changes the separator between authors; defaults to a semicolon (;)

• author-name-separator: Changes the separator between last and first names; defaults to a comma (,)

• display-authors: By default, the number of authors displayed is limited to 8; if 9 are provided, the ninth is displayed as "et al." This parameter allows display of fewer authors before the "et al." (e.g., {{para|display-authors|2); alternatively, the "et al." may be suppressed by the use of |display-authors=9.

• postscript: The closing punctuation for the citation; defaults to a period (.). If the parameter is present, but blank, no terminating punctuation will be used. Ignored if {{quote}} is specified.

• lastauthoramp: When set to any value, changes the separator to use between the last two names in lists of authors to an ampersand (&). Defaults to a semicolon and space (; ), else |author-separator= if set.

Not all pieces of information about the source are required in a citation. Some elements not included:

The total number of pages in a source are not part of a citation.

Web hosts and physical locations are not part of a citation. There is no need to include a host such as Google Books, Project Gutenberg or Scribd and they should never be noted as the publisher. Similarly, a specific library, library record or a shelf location would not be included.

CS1 templates may be inserted manually or by use of tools:

• RefToolbar is part of the editing tool bar. Version 2.0 does not yet support all templates supported by version 1.0.
• ProveIt may be enabled per the documentation.

Error checking:

• User:Ucucha/HarvErrors is a script that may be enabled to display errors when using Shortened footnotes or parenthetical referencing.

|accessdate= does not show.

If |url= is not supplied, then |accessdate= does not show; by design.

The bare URL shows before the title.

If the |title= field includes a newline or an invalid character then the link will be malformed; see Web links.

The title appears in red.

If URL is supplied, then the title cannot be wikilinked.

A field is truncated.

A pipe | in the value will truncate it.

The template markup shows.

Double open brackets [[ are used in a field without closing double brackets ]].

The author shows in brackets with an external link icon.

The use of an URL in |authorlink= will break the link; this field is for the name of the Wikipedia article about the author, not a website.

Multiple author or editor names are defined and one or more does not show

The parameters must be used in sequence, i.e. if |last= or |last1= is not defined, then |last2= will not show. By design.

|page=, |pages= or |at= do not show.

These parameters are exclusive and only one will show; by design.