Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Butwhatdoiknow (talk | contribs) at 13:03, 24 June 2008 (→General references versus inline citations: Add links.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This page documents an English Misplaced Pages style guideline. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

Shortcuts WP:CS WP:CITE WP:REF

This page is a style guide, describing how to write citations in articles.

Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, which is policy, says that attribution is required for direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. Any material that is challenged, and for which no source is provided within a reasonable time (or immediately if it's about a living person), may be removed by any editor. For information about the importance of using good sources in biographies of living persons, see Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons, which is also policy.

If you don't know how to format a citation, provide as much information as you can, and others will help to write it correctly.

Why sources should be cited

Misplaced Pages is by its very nature a work by people with widely different knowledge and skills. The reader needs to be assured that the material within it is reliable; this is especially important where statements are made about controversial issues or living persons. The purpose of citing your sources is:

• To ensure that the content of articles can be checked by any reader or editor.
• To show that your edit is not original research and to reduce editorial disputes.
• To avoid claims of plagiarism and copying.
• To help users find additional information on the topic.
• To ensure that material about living persons complies with biography policy.
• To improve the credibility of Misplaced Pages.

The citation should state, as clearly, fully, and precisely as possible, how a reader can find the source material, such as by external link to the source website. If the material is not findable online, it should be findable in reputable libraries, archives, or collections. If a citation without an external link is challenged as unfindable, any of the following is sufficient to show the material to be reasonably findable (though not necessarily reliable): providing an ISBN or OCLC number; linking to an established Misplaced Pages article about the source (the work, its author, or its publisher); or directly quoting the material on the talk page, briefly and in context.

Use of terms

This guideline uses the terms "source", "reference", "citing", and "citation" interchangeably.

When to cite sources

The list of featured-article criteria calls for citations where appropriate. This page clarifies that requirement. This list is not exhaustive, and the examples are suggestions only. Each case must be dealt with on its merits.

When adding material that is challenged or likely to be challenged

WP:Verifiability says: "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation."

The need for citations is especially important when writing about opinions held on a particular issue. Avoid weasel words where possible, such as, "Some people say ..." Instead, make your writing verifiable: find a specific person or group who holds that opinion and give a citation to a reputable publication in which they express that opinion. Remember that Misplaced Pages is not a place for expressing your own opinions or for original research. Opinions, data and statistics, and statements based on someone's scientific work should be cited and attributed to their authors in the text.

Because this is the English Misplaced Pages, English-language sources should be given whenever possible, and should always be used in preference to other language sources of equal caliber. However, do give references in other languages where appropriate. If quoting from a different language source, an English translation should be given with the original-language quote beside it. See also: Misplaced Pages:Verifiability#Non-English sources.

When quoting someone

You should always add a citation when quoting published material, and the citation should be placed directly after (or just before) the quotation, which should be enclosed within double quotation marks — "like this" — or single quotation marks if it is a quote-within-a-quote — "and here is such a 'quotation' as an example." For long quotes, you may wish to use Quotation templates.

When adding material to the biography of a living person

Biographies of living persons should be sourced with particular care, for legal and ethical reasons. All contentious material about living persons must cite a reliable source. If you find unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about a living person — whether in an article or on a talk page — remove it immediately! Do not leave it in the article while you request a source. Do not move it to the talk page. This applies whether the material is in a biography or any other article.

When checking content added by others

You can also add sources for material you did not write. Adding citations is an excellent way to contribute to Misplaced Pages. See Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check for organized efforts to add citations.

When uploading an image

• WP:CITE#IMAGE

Images must include source details and a copyright tag on the image description page. It is important that you list the author of the image if known (especially if different from the source), which is important both for copyright and for informational purposes. Some copyright licenses require that the original author receive credit for their work. If you download an image from the web, you should give the URL:

Source: Downloaded from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4280841.stm

If you got the image from an offline source, you should specify:

Source: Scanned from public record #5253 on file with Anytown, Somestate public surveyor

Any image with a non-free copyright license must be accompanied by a non-free use rationale (also called a fair use rationale) for each article in which the image is used.

How to cite sources

• WP:CITE#HOW

Citation styles

There are a number of citation styles and systems used in different fields, all including the same information, with different punctuation use, and with the order of appearance varying for the author's name, publication date, title, and page numbers. Any style or system is acceptable on Misplaced Pages so long as articles are internally consistent. You should follow the style already established in an article, if it has one; where there is disagreement, the style or system used by the first editor to use one should be respected.

General references versus inline citations

Articles can be supported with references in two ways: the provision of general references ("References") – books or other sources that support a significant amount of the material in the article – and inline citations ("Notes"), which are mandated by the featured article criteria and (to a lesser extent) the good article criteria. Inline citations are references within the text that provide source information for specific statements. They are appropriate for supporting statements of fact and are needed for statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, including contentious material about living persons, and for all quotations.

Say where you found the material

• WP:CITE#SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT

It is improper to copy a citation from an intermediate source without making clear that you saw only that intermediate source. For example, you might find some information on a Web page which says it comes from a certain book. Unless you look at the book yourself to check that the information is there, your reference is really the Web page, which is what you must cite. The credibility of your article rests on the credibility of the Web page, as well as the book, and your article must make that clear.

Reference qualification in article text

Uncontentious statements do not necessarily require further qualification in the article text apart from their references. No further description would be needed with the following, for example:

The word caffeine comes from the French term for coffee: café.

However, points which are more controversial, where there are contradictory studies or different opinions, may need to include more descriptive context. For example (from Super-recursive algorithm):

Martin Davis has described some of Burgin's claims as "misleading".

Here it is important to identify in the text exactly who is making the claim, since it would be inappropriate for Misplaced Pages to advocate that "Burgin's claims are misleading."

Provide full citations

• WP:CITE#FULL

All citation techniques require detailed full citations to be provided for each source used. Full citations must contain enough information for other editors to identify the specific published work you used.

Full citations for books typically include: the name of the author, the title of the book or article, the date of publication, and page numbers. The name of the publisher, city of publication, and ISBN are optional, although publisher is generally required for featured articles. For journal articles, include volume number, issue number (where the publication uses them) and page numbers. Citations for newspaper articles typically include the title of the article in quotes, the byline (author's name), the name of the newspaper in italics, date of publication, page number(s), and a comment with the date you retrieved it if it is online (invisible to the reader).

Provide page numbers

When citing books and articles, provide page numbers where appropriate. Page numbers should be included whenever possible in a citation that accompanies a specific quotation from, or a paraphrase or reference to, a specific passage of a book or article. The edition of the book should be included in the reference section, or included in the footnote, because pagination can change between editions. Page numbers are especially important in case of lengthy unindexed books. Page numbers are not required when a citation accompanies a general description of a book or article, or when a book or article, as a whole, is being used to exemplify a particular point of view.

Inline citation styles

Author-date referencing

Background and rules

According to The Oxford Style Manual, the author-date or Harvard system is the most commonly used reference method in the physical and social sciences (Ritter 2002). Author-date referencing can be especially useful when a single, large work has to be referenced by page number multiple times, as these separate citations would each require different footnotes.

Under the author-date referencing system, a reference source such as a book is cited in the text in parentheses, after the section, sentence, or paragraph for which the book was used as a source, using the surname of the author and the year of publication only, with the parentheses closing before the period, as in (Jones 2005), although parentheses should be outside the period when citing block quotes. Page numbers must be included in a citation that accompanies a specific quotation from, or a paraphrase or reference to, a specific passage of a book or article. They usually follow the date in this way: (Author 2006:28) or (Author 2006, p.28).

A full reference is then placed at the end of the text in an alphabetized list of "References".

In article, common rules:

• When the author of the reference is named as part of the text itself, put the year in parentheses; for example "Smith (2005) says..."
• For two authors, use (Smith & Jones 2005); for three or more authors, use (Smith et al. 2005).
• If the same author has published two books in 1996, and both are being referenced in the text, this is written as (Clancy 1996a) and (Clancy 1996b).
• If the date of publication is unavailable, use "n.d." (meaning, no date)
• Newspaper articles may use the name of the newspaper and the date of publication after the sentence (The Guardian, December 17, 2005).
• A book published long after the original publication may be cited (Marx 1967).
• For a quotation that is within the text and marked by quotation marks, the citation follows the end-quotation mark ("), and is placed before the period (.), "like this" (Smith 2005).
• For a quotation that is indented, the citation is placed after the period, like the following. (Smith 2005)
• In cases where the author is unknown:

If the article is written for an organization or periodical then use its name, as in (Department of Transport 2001) or (National Geographic 2005),

otherwise, use the article title, italicized, as in (Advertising in the Western Cape 1990:14).

In a "References" section at the end of the article:

For a book: in the case of (Author 2005a) and (Author 2005b), this might be:

• Author, A. (2005a). Harvard Referencing, New York: Random House. ISBN 1-899235-74-4
• Author, A. (2005b). More Harvard Referencing, New York: Random House. ISBN 1-899235-74-4

For an article: in the case of (Traynor 2005) or (The Guardian, December 17, 2005), this might be:

• Traynor, I. "Judge tells Ankara to decide on fate of leading author", The Guardian, December 17, 2005.

How to write them

Creating an anchor to the References section is highly recommended e.g. (Ritter 2002:40). To cite Ritter one would first create an anchor to Ritter's work in the References section:

<cite id=Ritter2002>* Ritter, R. (2002). ''The Oxford Style Manual''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860564-1</cite>

Then one would link to the anchor: ] throughout the text, if necessary providing a page number. Author-date referencing is particularly useful for works which must be repeatedly referenced by page number; in the case of footnotes, one must create an entirely new footnote for each different page.

Otherwise, you may use a citation template to anchor author-date references.

Footnotes

What footnotes are used for

A footnote is a note placed in the proper end section of a page to comment on a part of the main text, or to provide a reference (a source) for it. The connection between the relevant text and its footnote is indicated by a number or symbol which appears both after the relevant text and before the footnote. Footnotes are often used to add information that might be helpful to later fact-checkers, such as a quotation that supports your edit.

How to write them

1. Place a <ref> ... </ref> where you want a footnote reference number to appear in an article—type the text of the note between the ref tags.
2. Place <references/> or {{reflist}} in an otherwise empty "Notes" or "References" section near the end of the article—the list of notes will be automatically generated here. If you want to create columns of notes, write {{reflist|2}}.

Example edit:

The Sun is pretty big,<ref>Miller, E: "The Sun", page 23. Academic Press, 2005.</ref>
but the Moon is not so big.<ref>Brown, R: "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 51(78):46</ref>
The Sun is also quite hot.<ref> 6 May, 1940.</ref>
==Notes==
<references/>

Example rendered result:

The Sun is pretty big, but the Moon is not so big. The Sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

1. Miller, E: "The Sun", page 23. Academic Press, 2005.
2. Brown, R: "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78):46.
3. "What Makes the Sun Hot", Time Magazine 6 May, 1940.

Ref tags and punctuation

• WP:REFPUNC

Material may be referenced mid-sentence, but footnotes are usually placed at the end of a sentence or paragraph. Footnotes at the end of a sentence or phrase are normally placed immediately after the punctuation, except for dashes, as recommended by the Chicago Manual of Style and other style guides. Some editors prefer the in-house style of journals such as Nature, which place references before punctuation. If an article has evolved using predominantly one style of ref tag placement, the whole article should conform to that style unless there is a consensus to change it.

Section headings

Recommended section names to use for footnotes in Misplaced Pages are:

• ==Notes==
• ==Footnotes==
• ==References==

Maintaining a "References" section in addition to "Notes"

When footnotes are used, some editors find it helpful to maintain a separate "References" section, in which the sources that were used are listed in alphabetical order. With articles that have a lot of footnotes, it can be hard to see which sources have been used, particularly when the footnotes contain explanatory text. A References section helps readers to see at a glance which references were used.

When a separate reference section is included, the citations are listed there in alphabetical order, with the footnotes in a separate section entitled "Notes" or "Footnotes." Short footnotes may be used, giving the author(s), year, and the page number, and perhaps the title, but without the full citation (see below).

Shortened notes

When a separate reference section is included and full citations are listed there in alphabetical order, with the footnotes in a separate section entitled "Notes" or "Footnotes", then shortened notes may be used, giving the author(s), publication year, or perhaps the title, and the page numbers, in place of the full detail.

Example edit:

The Sun is pretty big,<ref>Miller 2005, p.23.</ref>
but the Moon is not so big.<ref>Brown 2006, p.46.</ref>
The Sun is also quite hot.<ref>Miller 2005, p.34.</ref>
== Notes ==
{{reflist|2}}
== References ==
*Brown, R (2006). "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78).
*Miller, E (2005). "The Sun", Academic Press.

Example rendered result:

The Sun is pretty big, but the Moon is not so big. The Sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

1. Miller 2005, p.23.
2. Brown 2006, p.46.
3. Miller 2005, p.34.

References

---

• Brown, R (2006). "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78).
• Miller, E (2005). "The Sun", Academic Press.

Shortened notes using titles rather than publication dates could look like this.

1. Miller "The Sun", p.23.
2. Brown "Size of the Moon", p.46.
3. Miller "The Sun", p.34.

In any case note that the full reference is only listed once, but can be cross-referred to multiple times from the shortened notes, for example for different page references.

Wikilinks to full references

Wikilinks can be created from short note citations to their matching references, thus allowing the reader to click on the shortened note and easily navigate to its appropriate full reference.

See the "Further considerations (Wikilinks to full references)" page for more details.

Clearer editing with shortened notes

Because footnotes work by placing the required content inside <ref> tags within the article text they necessarily break up the text to some degree when in edit mode. Article text can become difficult to read and maintain. In this respect well referenced articles can unfortunately suffer disproportionately in comparison to those not so well sourced. In any case the disruptive effect can kept to a minimum by using shortened notes.

See the "Example edits for different methods" page for some comparative examples using shortened notes and full length references in footnotes. These offer representations of edit mode views with examples of how they render to the reader.

Well-maintained reference lists

Another advantage of shortened notes is that they can be used in combination with source lists, like those used for general references. The disadvantage of those - that they do not tie to specific facts in the article - can thus be overcome.

Moreover, lists of sources ordered like in scientific articles (by author names, or in some cases by publication date) are easy to maintain and keep up to date by any user. Especially in well-sourced articles, footnoted references are not displayed in any particular order. In a monolithic reference list, is much easier to see at a glance whether a specific source has already been incorporated into the article.

And since the references are kept in one coherent block of code rather than strewn throughout the text, picking a specific source for further editing (e.g. adding ISBN, DOI or other detail) is also more convenient.

Embedded links

Web pages referenced in an article can be linked to directly by enclosing the URL in square brackets. For example, a reference to a newspaper article can be embedded like: , which looks like this:

A full citation is also required in a References section at the end of the article. Providing an access date for the link in a comment helps editors recover a link that has become unavailable.

*Plunkett, John. , ''The Guardian'', ], ]. <!--accessed June 5, 2008-->

which appears as:

• Plunkett, John. "Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying", The Guardian, October 27, 2005.

Because of the difficulties in associating them with their appropriate full references, the use of embedded links for inline citations is not particularly recommended as a method of best practice. As a rule-of-thumb, if author, place of publication, and date of publishing and/or last revision can be determined, it is advised to make a full citation. Approximate dates are usually written in , e.g. for a source published around 2006. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine can aid in determining dates of last revision.

Citation templates

The use of citation templates is neither encouraged nor discouraged. Templates may be used or removed at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with other editors on the article. Because templates can be contentious, editors should not change an article with a distinctive citation format to another without gaining consensus.

How to use them

There are (at least) two families of citation templates. The {{Citation}} template is intended to provide citations for many types of references. The other family has names of the form {{Cite xxx}} (for example, {{Cite book}} and {{Cite web}}). These two families produce different citation styles. For example, the {{Cite xxx}} family separates elements with a full stop, and gives page ranges as plain numbers, while the {{Citation}} template separates elements with a comma, and precedes page ranges with "pp." Thus, these two families should not be mixed in the same article.

The following construct using the {{Citation}} template produces a citation similar to the hand-formatted example citation in the Author-date referencing:How to write them subsection above:

* {{Citation |last=Ritter |first=R. |year=2002 |title=The Oxford Style Manual |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-860564-1}}

The {{Harv}} family of templates is available to produce author-date references in various formats with links matching the anchors produced by the {{Citation}} template. The following example constructs would produce references with different formatting styles having links matching the anchor produced by the example above:

Construct	Result
{{harv|Ritter|2002}}	(Ritter 2002) harv error: no target: CITEREFRitter2002 (help)
{{harv|Ritter|2002|p=10}}	(Ritter 2002, p. 10) harv error: no target: CITEREFRitter2002 (help)
{{harv|Ritter|2002|pp=5-10}}	(Ritter 2002, pp. 5–10) harv error: no target: CITEREFRitter2002 (help)
{{harvnb|Ritter|2002|pp=5-10}}	Ritter 2002, pp. 5–10 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFRitter2002 (help)
{{harvcol|Ritter|2002|pp=5-10}}	(Ritter 2002:5–10) harvcol error: no target: CITEREFRitter2002 (help)
{{harvcolnb|Ritter|2002|pp=5-10}}	Ritter 2002:5–10 harvcolnb error: no target: CITEREFRitter2002 (help)
<ref>{{harvcolnb|Ritter|2002|pp=5-10}}</ref>	places Ritter 2002:5–10 harvcolnb error: no target: CITEREFRitter2002 (help) in a numbered footnote

It is possible to construct more exotic reference formats as well as to produce links with {{Harv}} family templates which match anchors produced by {{Cite xxx}} family templates (or any arbitrary anchor). The details are beyond the scope of this subsection, and can be found in the documentation of the individual templates.

Further reading/External links

An ==External links== or ==Further reading== or ==Bibliography== section is placed near the end of an article and offers books, articles, and links to websites related to the topic that might be of interest to the reader. The section "Further reading" may include both online material and material not available online. If all recommended material is online, the section may be titled "External links".

All items used as sources in the article must be listed in the "References" or "Notes" section, and are usually not included in "Further reading" or "External links". However, if an item used as a reference covers the topic beyond the scope of the article, and has significant usefulness beyond verification of the article, you may want to include it here as well. This also makes it easier for users to identify all the major recommended resources on a topic. The Misplaced Pages guideline for external links that are not used as sources can be found in Misplaced Pages:External links.

Convenience links

A "convenience link" is a link to source material on the Web posted by someone other than the original publisher or author. For example, a newspaper article no longer available on the newspaper's website may be hosted elsewhere. When offering convenience links, it is important to be reasonably certain that the convenience copy is a true copy of the original, without any changes or inappropriate commentary, and that it does not infringe the original publisher's copyright. Accuracy can be assumed when the hosting website appears reliable, but editors should always exercise caution, and ideally find and verify multiple copies of the material for contentious items.

Where several sites host a copy of the material, the site selected as the convenience link should be the one whose general content appears most in line with Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view and Misplaced Pages:Verifiability.

Scrolling lists

Scrolling lists, for example of references, should never be used because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, it cannot be guaranteed that such lists will display properly in all web browsers.

Dealing with citation problems

Unsourced material

If an article has no references, and you are unable to find them yourself, you can tag the article with the template {{Unreferenced}}, so long as the article is not nonsensical or a WP:BLP, in which case request admin assistance. If a particular claim in an article lacks citation and is doubtful, consider placing {{fact}} after the sentence or removing it. Consider the following in deciding which action to take:

1. If a claim is doubtful but not harmful to the whole article or to Misplaced Pages, use the {{fact}} tag, but remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time.

2. If a claim is doubtful and harmful, you should remove it from the article; you may want to move it to the talk page and ask for a source, unless you regard it as very harmful or absurd, in which case it should not be posted to a talk page either. Use your common sense. All unsourced and poorly sourced contentious material about living persons should be removed from articles and talk pages immediately. It should not be tagged. See Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons and Misplaced Pages:Libel.

What to do when a reference link "goes dead"

• WP:DEADREF

When a link "goes dead" (see link rot and Misplaced Pages:Dead external links), it should be repaired or replaced, if possible. In most cases, one of the following approaches will give an acceptable alternative.

• First, check the link to confirm that it is dead. The site may have been temporarily down or changed its linking structure. If the link has returned to service but has been labeled as a dead link, simply remove the labeling. See Template:dead link.
• Find a copy of the referenced document. There may be a copy of the referenced document in a web archiving service. If so, update the dead link to point to the copy of the referenced document.
  • For the Internet Archive, go to http://www.webarchive.org/. Also, see Misplaced Pages:Using the Wayback Machine. Note that there may be a delay of six months before a recent link shows up in the Internet Archive.
  • For WebCite, go to http://www.webcitation.org, and use their search page.
• Find a substitute for the referenced document. Enter key words or phrases or other content from the cited material into the referenced website's search engine, into a similar website's search engine, or into a general search engine such as Google. (A search engine may hold a cached version of the dead link for a short time, which can help find a substitute.) Or, browse the referenced document's website or similar websites. If you find a new document that can serve as a substitute, update the dead link to refer to the new document.
• Deactivate the dead link, and keep the citation information if still appropriate to the article. (This may happen, for example, when an online copy of material that originally appeared in print is no longer online.) In the remaining citation, note that the dead link was found to be inactive on today's date. Even with an inactive link, the citation still records a source that was used, and provides a context for understanding archiving delays or for taking other actions. In order to deactivate the dead link, do one of the following.
  • Turn the dead link into plain text. Remove only enough of the dead link's wikitext or markup language or URI scheme (square brackets, "http://", and so on) so that clicking on the link does not take you to its destination. This will make the link visible to both readers and editors of the article.
  • Turn the dead link into an HTML comment. Place HTML comment markup language around the link. This will make the link disappear when reading the article, but will preserve the link for editors of the article.

If a dead link cannot be repaired or replaced, consider reworking the article section so that it no longer relies on the dead link.

Whether a dead link can or cannot be repaired or replaced, remember that Misplaced Pages policy (including policy on sources and biographies of living persons) still applies. Consider doing further edits of the citation and cited material, if appropriate, to improve the article.

To help prevent dead links, consider citing reference sources using a persistent identifier such as a digital object identifier, if available; or consider archiving the referenced document online when writing the article section, if permitted by copyright. Also, consider avoiding links to web pages that usually disappear after short periods of time, such as at some news sites.

Tools

Internet services

• WebCite - tool to archive webpages to allow stable citation links.
• OttoBib.com is a free tool to generate an alphabetized bibliography for books, using an input list of International Standard Book Number (ISBN) numbers, with output in MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, BibTeX, or Misplaced Pages format (also generates a permalink).
• Zotero allows you to find articles in Mozilla Firefox and easily paste them into Misplaced Pages as citation templates using Ctrl-Alt-C.
  • If Ctrl-Alt-C does not work, right-click the article and select "Export Selected Item...", then choose "Misplaced Pages Citation Templates."

Citation creation tools

The following tools generate code for a citation template. They require the following input:

DOI

• Universal Reference Formatter

PMID / PMC (PubMed Central)

• Universal Reference Formatter
• Diberri Template builder

A Google scholar search

• Universal Reference Formatter

BibTeX

• Bibtex to Wikitext converter

ISBN

• {{Cite book}} generator

URL

• WPCITE - A firefox add-in allowing you to create a partial {{cite news}} template. See the developer's page for details.
• Universal Reference Formatter

• DOI Bot - Completes any partial references on a given page. References must either contain a DOI, or enough fields to be uniquely found.

If you already have all the data required, but want to format it appropriately, you can use...

• refToolbar: A Javascript gadget, allowing you to add a reference without leaving the edit page of the article you're editing
• Reference generator: Performs the same task, but on an external website

Citation processing tools

• User:CitationTool - tool for finding article-level citation errors and fixing them.
• DOI bot - automatically fixes common errors in individual citations, and adds missing fields

Programming tools

• Wikicite is a free program that helps editors to properly reference their Misplaced Pages contributions using citation templates. It is written in Visual Basic .NET, making it suitable only for users with the .NET Framework installed on Windows, or, for other platforms, the Mono alternative framework. Wikicite and its source code is freely available, see the developer's page for further details.
• pubmed2wiki.xsl a XSL stylesheet transforming the XML output of pubmed to Misplaced Pages refs.
• User:Richiez has tools to automatically handle citations for a whole article at a time. Converts occurences of {{pmid XXXX}} or {{isbn XXXX}} to properly formatted footnote or harvard style references. Written in ruby and requires a working installation with basic libraries.

See also

• Misplaced Pages:Verification methods - listing examples of the most common ways that references are used in Misplaced Pages articles.
• Misplaced Pages:Citing sources/example style – listing examples of full references using APA and Harvard referencing techniques.
• Misplaced Pages:Citing sources/Example edits for different methods - showing comparative edit mode representations for different citation methods and techniques.
• Misplaced Pages:Citing sources/Further considerations - information of additional interest.
• Misplaced Pages:Citation templates – a full listing of various styles for citing all sorts of materials.
• Misplaced Pages:Copyright problems – in case of text that has been copied verbatim inappropriately.
• Misplaced Pages:Referencing for beginners – a simple practical guide to getting started.
• Misplaced Pages:Scientific citation guidelines – guidelines for dealing with scientific and mathematical articles.
• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Citation cleanup - a group of people devoted to cleaning citations

Notes

1. "Caffeine" in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000.
2. Davis, Martin (2006), "The Church–Turing Thesis: Consensus and opposition". Proceedings, Computability in Europe 2006. Lecture notes in computer science, 3988 pp. 125–132.
3. The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed. 1993, Clause 15.8, p. 494 - "The superior numerals used for note reference numbers in the text should follow any punctuation marks except the dash, which they precede. The numbers should also be placed outside closing parentheses." - See also CMoS Online, Style Q&A, Punctuation.
4. Other style guides suggesting that superscript note reference numbers should generally be placed after punctuation include: Oxford/Hart's Rules, the MLA Style Manual, APA Style, Dictionary.com, IEEE style and Legal Blue Book Style (as well as the general exception for dashes, guides may variously make other exceptions for colons, semicolons and quotation marks).

References

• Concordia Libraries (Concordia University). Citation and Style Guides. (This provides a list of common citation styles.)
• Citation Styles Handbook: APA
• Citation Styles Handbook: MLA
• APA Style.org
• Using American Psychological Association (APA) Format (Updated to 5th Edition)
• Citing Electronic Documentation (APA, Chicago, MLA)
• The Columbia Guide to Online Style
• Ritter, R. (2002). The Oxford Style Manual. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860564-1
• University of Chicago Press Staff. (2003). The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-10403-6

Further reading

• A writer's practical guide to MLA documentation
• AMA Citation Style
• Chicago/Turabian Documentation
• Template:PDFlink
• Guide to Citation Style Guides
• Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals
• American Chemical Society reference style guidelines
• Citation Machine

• Misplaced Pages style guidelines
• Misplaced Pages how-to