Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Citing sources (section)

<noinclude>{{short description|Guideline on how to cite sources}}{{pp-semi-indef}}{{pp-move-indef}}</noinclude>
{{for-multi|information on referencing citations in Wikipedia articles|Help:Footnotes|and|Wikipedia:Inline citation|information about citing Wikipedia articles for use in work outside of Wikipedia|Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia}}
{{Redirect2|WP:CITE|WP:REF|the Citation Needed information page|WP:CITENEED|the reference desk|WP:REFD}}
{{Redirect|WP:CS|the policy on clean start|Wikipedia:Clean start|the computer science WikiProject|Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science}}
{{bots|deny=Citation bot}}
{{subcat guideline|content guideline|Citing sources|WP:CS|WP:CITE|WP:REF}}
{{nutshell|Cite [[WP:RS|reliable sources]]. You can add a citation by selecting from the drop-down [[File:VisualEditor - Cite Pulldown.png|40px|alt="cite"]] menu at the top of the [[Help:Edit#Edit screen(s)|editing box]].<!--note that this is the same in markup or Visual Editor, hurrah for simplicity--> In [[Help:Wikitext|markup]], you can add a citation manually using [[Wikipedia:Citing_sources#How to place an inline citation using ref tags|ref tags]]. More elaborate and useful ways to cite sources are detailed below.}}
{{beginner version|Help:Referencing for beginners}}

A '''citation''', or '''reference''',{{notetag|Words like ''citation'' and ''reference'' are used interchangeably on the English Wikipedia. On talk pages, where the language can be more informal, or in edit summaries or templates where space is a consideration, ''reference'' is often abbreviated ''ref'', with the plural ''refs''. ''Footnote'' may refer specifically to citations using [[Help:Footnote|ref tag formatting]] or to explanatory text; ''endnotes'' specifically refers to citations placed at the end of the page. See also: [[Wikipedia:Glossary#Reference|Wikipedia:Glossary]].}} uniquely identifies a [[WP:SOURCE|source]] of information, e.g.:
{{block indent|{{cite book |last1=Ritter |first1=R. M. |date=2003 |title=The Oxford Style Manual |page=1 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-860564-5 |ref=none}}}}
Wikipedia's [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|verifiability]] policy requires [[Wikipedia:Inline citation|inline citations]] for any material [[WP:CHALLENGED|challenged or likely to be challenged]], and for all quotations, anywhere in [[WP:Mainspace|article space]].

A citation or reference in an article usually has two parts. In the first part, each section of text that is either based on, or quoted from, an outside source is marked as such with an [[WP:INCITE|inline citation]]. This is usually displayed as a superscript [[Help:footnotes|footnote]] number: {{dummy ref}} The second necessary part of the citation or reference is the list of full references, which provides complete, formatted detail about the source, so that anyone reading the article can find it and verify it.

This page explains how to place and format both parts of the citation. Each article should use one citation method or style throughout. If an article already has citations, preserve consistency by using that method or seek consensus on the talk page before changing it {{crossref|(the principle is reviewed at {{section link||Variation in citation methods}})}}. While you should try to write citations correctly, what matters most is that you provide enough information to identify the source. Others will improve the formatting if needed. See: "[[Help:Referencing for beginners]]", for a brief introduction on how to put references in Wikipedia articles; and [[Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User_guide#Using_standard_cite_templates|cite templates in Visual Editor]], about a graphical way for citation, included in Wikipedia.

{{guideline list}}