Help:Cite

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

In the VisualEditor
On the toolbar, there is a button with an open book icon. Clicking on it opens a dropdown which offers adding a basic citation reference or reusing one that was previously inserted.

In addition, there is a need to insert the actual references list on the page (anyway below all the references, but typically it will be at the bottom, under a section titled "References" or something similar). Place the cursor on the desired location, click on the "Insert" dropdown and choose "References list".

In source editor
To create a footnote or reference while editing in source mode, simply 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 section titled "references", "footnotes", "citations", etc. 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 reference 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
References can be grouped into several separate lists.

On VisualEditor, the citation dialog box allows assigning each reference to a certain group. Then, insert a references list using the "Insert" dropdown as explained above, select it, and click "Edit" on the pop-up box. You will get an option to define that references list to show a certain group.

In source editing, use in order to assign a reference to a certain group, and use   to insert the references list of that group.

All reference lists have to be located after all the related references, otherwise they will render errors.

or  just after the text in question.

To create such a template, you can make a new page called Template:Fact, and put the following code on it:



This will result in [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 customize 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. Non-Lua versions of these templates can be found on Template:Cite book and Template:Cite journal.

Next steps

 * Creating links
 * Templates

Further help and feedback
de:Hilfe:Einzelnachweise es:Ayuda:Cita fr:Aide:Cite hi:सहायता:उद्धरण it:Aiuto:Note ja:ヘルプ:引用文献・出典・脚注 ko:도움말:인용 pt:Ajuda:Cite ru:Справка:Примечания tr:Yardım:Kaynakça uk:Довідка:Примітки vi:Trợ giúp:Cước chú zh:Help:引用