Help:Adding references

References are a way to refer the reader to some proof for a claim. (You can test things in the Sandbox)

Adding references

Method 1: The simplest way to add a reference to a sentence is to put something between <ref> and </ref> tags, like this:

The world is round.<ref>Here is my reference</ref>

Method 2(a): If you're linking to a website then you can use {{cite web}} like this:

The world is round.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://example.com|title=Page about the world|quote=The world is a spherical planet orbiting the Sun.}}</ref>

Method 2(b): if it's clearer, you can put each part on separate lines:

The world is round.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://example.com
|title=Page about the world
|quote=The world is a spherical planet orbiting the Sun.}}</ref>

Method 3: If your reference is really long and you think it would make the article hard to edit, you can separate it and put just a named reference in the article body, like this:

The world is round.<ref name=mylongref />

And then put the content of the named reference in between <references> and </references> at the start of the Reference section:

==References==
<references>
<ref name=mylongref>
blah blah blah
blah blah blah
blah blah blah
blah blah blah
blah blah blah
blah blah blah
</ref>
</references>
{{reflist}}

Examples of each

You can try these out at Sandbox#Example_references

Here is method 1, just text in <ref></ref> tags.

Here is method 2(a), {{cite web}} on one line.

Here is method 2(b), {{cite web}} on multiple lines.

Here is method 3, the named reference.

Requesting references

If you find a statement which you feel needs to be justified, then add a {{reference needed}} tag, or the shortcut {{ref}} like so:

This is my statement which some might doubt.{{ref}}

This will be displayed as:

This is my statement which some might doubt.^{[reference needed]}

Adding a section to display the references

The text in the ref tags should be displayed at the end of the article. There are two ways to do this. The most common is to put a {{reflist}} tag where you want them to be displayed - usually right after a "References" section title, like so:

==References==
{{reflist}}

The second way is for the situation where you want to define lengthy references in the references section. Then you use <references></references> tags, as described in the section #Adding_references of this page.

External links

• The documentation of the Cite.php extension which Wikipedia and ESP Wiki use for references
• Wikipedia's help page about footnotes
  • (in particular, the section about list-defined footnotes)