Help:Citation Style 1: Difference between revisions

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 H:CITE1

This help page has testcases demonstrating various uses.

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

Wikipedia does not have a single house style. Editors may choose any option they want; one article need not match what is done in other articles or what is done in professional publications or recommended by academic style guides. However, citations within a given article should follow a consistent style.

CS1 uses elements of The Chicago Manual of Style and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, with significant adaptations.

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.

To be compliant with CS1, a template must:

• Be based on {{citation/core}} or one of the templates listed below.
• Use a period as a punctuation mark to separate fields and end the citation.
• Use a semicolon as a punctuation mark to separate authors and editors.
• Format longer works in italics.
• Format short works such as chapters in quotes.

General use

Bot-filled

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.

Specific source

There are a number of templates that are CS1 compliant but are tied to a specific source; these are listed in Category:Citation Style 1 specific-source templates.

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". Work. Publisher. Identifiers. {{cite journal}}: |last= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)

• Without author:

"Title". Work. Publisher. Date. Identifiers. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Authors

An author may be cited using separate parameters for the author's last name and first name by using |last= and |first=. If a cited source has multiple authors, subsequent authors can be listed in the citation using |last2= and |first2=, |last3= and |first3=, etc. as shown in the following example:^{[notes 1]}

{{cite book |last=Hawking |first=Stephen |last2=Hawking |first2=Lucy |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe}}

Hawking, Stephen; Hawking, Lucy. George's Secret Key to the Universe.

If a cited source has a large number of authors, one can limit the number of authors displayed when the citation is published by using the |display-authors= parameter as described in detail in the Display options section of this help page.

If a cited author is notable and the author has a Wikipedia article, the author's name can be linked with |authorlink=. If a citation includes multiple notable authors, one may use |authorlink2=, |authorlink3=, etc. This method is used because |last= and |first= do not allow wikilinking. Please note that |authorlink= can not be used to link to an external website; the external link will not render correctly. Below is an example of a wikilinked author credit:

{{cite book |last=Hawking |first=Stephen |authorlink=Stephen Hawking |last2=Hawking |first2=Lucy |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe}}

Hawking, Stephen; Hawking, Lucy. George's Secret Key to the Universe.

When an author is cited, the date of the cited work is displayed after the author's name, as shown in the example below:

{{cite book |last=Hawking |first=Stephen |authorlink=Stephen Hawking |last2=Hawking |first2=Lucy |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe |year=2007}}

Hawking, Stephen; Hawking, Lucy (2007). George's Secret Key to the Universe.

If no author is cited, the date appears after the title, as shown in the example below:

{{cite book |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe |year=2007}}

George's Secret Key to the Universe. 2007.

If the cited source does not credit an author, as is common with newswire reports, press releases or company websites use:

|author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->

This HTML comment alerts both fact-checking and citation-fixing editors and bots that the cited source specifically did not name an author and therefore an author credit wasn't accidentally omitted from the citation. Without this entry editors and bots would waste time researching cited sources in an attempt to improve existing citations only to find that there is no author to credit.

When using |author= 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 professional journals covering that field use such a redundant citation style.

Editors should use an |author= organizational citation 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. Do not use |author= to assert what you think was probably the collective author when the source itself does not specifically specify a collective author; doing so is

An editor may be cited using separate parameters for the editor's last and first name. A single or first editor would use |editor-last= and |editor-first=; subsequent editors would use |editor2-last= and |editor2-first=, |editor3-last= and |editor3-first=, etc.[notes 2]

If an editor is notable and has a Wikipedia article, you may wikilink to that editor's Wikipedia article using |editor-link=. If a cited work has multiple editors, you may use |editor2-link=, |editor3-link=, etc. to wikilink to each editor's Wikipedia article. This method is used because |editor-last= and |editor-first= do not allow wikilinking. Please note that |editor-link= can not be used to link to an external website; the external link will not render correctly.

If a cited source has a large number or editors, one can limit the number of editors displayed when the citation is published using the |display-editors= parameter as described in detail in the Display options section of this help page.

Others

• others: This parameter is used to credit contributors other than an author or an editor, such as an illustrator or a translator. You should include both the type of contribution and the name of the contributor, for example |others=Illustrated by John Smith or |others=Trans. Jones

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.

Dates formats per

If dates are to be used with the ref=harv parameter the year range is 100 to present, and no era indication (AD, BC, CE, BCE) should be included. In the case where the same author has written more than one work in the same year, a letter may not be appended if using the date parameter (date = July 4, 1997b). If using just the year parameter, the limitations on year range do not apply, and a letter may be appended to the year (year = 1997b).

Titles and chapters

• title The title of the cited source. Titles are generally displayed in italics, except for short works such as a {{
  As with trademarks
  , Wikipedia does not attempt to emulate any stylistic flourishes used by the cited source's publisher, such as ALL-CAPS, all-lower-case, Small Caps, etc.; use either standard title case or sentence case consistently. If the cited source is itself notable and has a Wikipedia article, the title can be wikilinked. Wikilinking the title will make it impossible to use the "url" parameter to link to an external copy of the cited source, so only do this when citing works that do not need to be externally linked. A link to the actual source is preferred to a link to a Wikipedia article about the source.
• trans_title: If the cited source is in a foreign language, an English translation of the title can be given here. This field will be displayed in square brackets after the title and will be linked to |url= if used.
• chapter The title of the cited chapter from the source, written in full. Displayed in quotes before the title. For websites arranged in sections the "at" parameter serves a similar function: |at=Featured News
• trans_chapter: If the cited source is in a foreign language, an English translation of the cited chapter title can be given here. This field will be displayed in square brackets within the quotation marks which enclose the chapter field.

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

Type

• 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. Other useful values are Review, Systemic review, Meta-analysis or Original article.

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 is also aliased to 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 or print periodical, or an episode in a TV series. Do not confuse this with the "publisher" parameter, which is for the publishing company. If the work is notable and has an article, it should be wiki-linked at first appearance in citations in the article. If the "title" is already linked to externally, do not externally link to the "work".

On websites, in most cases "work" is the name of the website (as usually given in the logo/banner area of the site), otherwise the site's domain name. A leading "The" can usually be left off a website, unless confusion might result. If the "work" as given by the site/publication would be exactly the same as the name of the publisher, use the domain name; do not falsify the work's name by adding descriptive verbiage like "website of [Publisher]" or "[Publisher]'s Homepage". Capitalize for reading clarity, and omit "www.", e.g. convert "www.veterinaryresourcesuk.com" to "VeterinaryResourcesUK.com". For periodicals, it is conventional in citations (not running prose) to omit a leading "The" for publications with multi-part names (|newspaper=

Astrophysical Journal but |newspaper=The Nation) unless ambiguity would result. While many journals themselves use highly abbreviated titles when citing other journals (e.g. "J Am Vet Med" for "Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association

"), because specialists in the field the journal covers usually already know what these abbreviation mean. Our readers do not, and these abbreviations should always be expanded. If the titled item being cited is part of some other larger work, such as a book, periodical or sub-organization, forming a sub-site at a domain name (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/system. If the nature of the work and its relation to the site, book or other context in which it is found is complicated or confusing, simply explain the situation after the citation template and before the </ref> that closes the citation.

• 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 or the company is usually known with that designation even in everyday use. "Publisher", "Publishing" and "Publications" can be abbreviated "Pubr.", "Pubg." and "Pubs." respectively, but some templates in this series include a period (full-stop) immediately after this parameter, so the period may have to be omitted; check the output if you abbreviate here. These words are usually safe to omit, but are usefully included where the publisher's name might be confusing. This is most often the case when the publisher's name is something like "Joshua Martin Publications", which without the designation might be mistaken for a co-author. A leading "The" can generally be omitted, again unless confusion might result (e.g., for The International Cat Association, "The" is part of their official acronym, TICA). If the publisher is notable and has an article independent of the "work", the "publisher" parameter can include a wiki-link to that article, but should never externally link to the publisher's website. The "publisher" parameter can be included even where it would be the same or mostly the same as the work/site/journal/etc., for example:

|work=Amazon.com    and   |publisher=Amazon

|newspaper=The New York Times    and   |publisher=The New York Times Company

(Here, the New York Times links go to different articles (and linked company names can be abbreviated: |publisher=

whois

for websites) fails, use |publisher=<!--Unspecified by source.--> to explicitly indicate that this was checked, so other editors do not waste time duplicating your fruitless efforts. Do not guess at the publisher when this information isn't clear.

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

Creates an anchor named

harv

|Hardcastle|2006|pp=12-34}}.

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

Creates an anchor named

harv

|Hardcastle|Reisch|2006|pp=12-34}}.

• |ref=ID: Creates a custom anchor defined by ID. This is useful where the author and/or date is unknown. The {{
  harv
  |Monty Python and Philosophy|2006|pp=12-34}}

Display options

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

• mode: Sets element separator, default terminal punctuation, and certain capitalization according to the value provided. For |mode=cs1, element separator and terminal punctuation is a period (.); where appropriate, initial letters of certain words are capitalized ('Retrieved...'). For |mode=cs2, element separator is a comma (,); terminal punctuation is omitted; where appropriate, initial letters of certain words are not capitalized ('retrieved...'). These styles correspond to Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2 respectively. To override default terminal punctuation use postscript.
• author-mask:
• contributor-mask:
• editor-mask:
• interviewer-mask:
• subject-mask:
• translator-mask:

  Replaces the name of the (first) author with em dashes or text. Set <name>-mask to a numeric value n to set the dash n em spaces wide; set <name>-mask to a text value to display the text without a trailing author separator; for example, "with". The numeric value 0 is a special case to be used in conjunction with <name>-link—in this case, the value of <name>-link will be used as (linked) text. In either case, you must still include the values for all names for metadata purposes. Primarily intended for use with bibliographies or bibliography styles where multiple works by a single author are listed sequentially such as shortened footnotes. Do not use in a list generated by {{reflist}}, <references /> or similar as there is no control of the order in which references are displayed. Mask parameters can take an enumerator in the name of the parameter (e.g. |authorn-mask=) to apply the mask to a specific name.

• display-authors:
• display-contributors:
• display-editors:
• display-interviewers:
• display-subjects:
• display-translators:

  Controls the number of author (or other kind of contributor) names that are displayed. By default, all authors are displayed. To change the displayed number of names, set the parameter to the desired number. For example, |display-authors=2 will display only the first two authors in a citation (and not affect the display of the other kinds of contributors). |display-authors=0 is a special case suppressing the display of all authors including the et al. |display-authors=etal displays all authors in the list followed by et al. Aliases: none.

• postscript: Controls the closing punctuation for a citation; defaults to a period (.); for no terminating punctuation, specify |postscript=none – leaving |postscript= empty is the same as omitting it, but is ambiguous. Additional text, or templates that render more than a single terminating punctuation character, will generate a maintenance message. |postscript= is ignored if quote is defined.

Online sources that require subscription or registration are acceptable. In these instances, add |subscription=yes or |registration=yes to the CS1 template.

When viewing the page, CS1 templates render the URL to the title to create a link; when printing, the URL is printed. External link icons are not printed.

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
  provides a graphical interface for editing, adding, and citing references. It may be enabled per the documentation.
• Wikipedia citation tool for Google Books
• DOI Wikipedia reference generator
• New York Times Wikipedia reference generator
• Reflinks - Adds references to templates while updating/filling-in title/dates/publisher/accessdates etc.
• Zotero can export citations in Wikipedia-ready format.

Error checking:

• 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.

The URL is not linked and shows in brackets.

The URL must include the

URI scheme in order for MediaWiki to recognize it as a link. For example: www.example.org vs. http://www.example.org

.

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 mutually exclusive, and only one will show; by design.

The periods separating the series of fields are missing

If |separator= is present but blank, no separator punctuation will be used.

The citation is broken across lines, successive lines are indented and may be bulleted or numbered.

If |separator= is set to an asterisk (*), colon (:) or hash (#) they will be interpreted as wikimarkup.

Too many templates used on one page can also cause server lag problems, causing the page to load slowly or save slowly after an edit has been made.