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A link to this page can be created by using {{ cs1}} to create Citation Style 1. 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 WP:CITEVAR:
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.
Style
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.
Templates
General use
- ↑ Cite4Wiki uses {{Cite web}} by default, but has been customized to use {{Cite news}}, etc., for certain specific sources, and can be further customized in this manner.
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.
How the templates work
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:
- author (date). title. publisher. identifiers
- title. publisher. date. identifiers
Authors and editors
Authors may be included by separate parameters for the given name and surname. A single or first author would use |last= and |first= and subsequent authors would use |last2= and |first2= through |last9= and |first9=. This method shows the name in last, first style:
- Script error
You may also use |author= through |author9= to include the full author name. This method is used when first last order style is used, the national or ethnic name style is not first last or an organizational author is used. This may not create the expected anchor for Shortened footnotes and parenthetical referencing.
If the author has a Wikipedia article, the author name can be linked with |authorlink= through |authorlink9=. This method is used because |last= and |first= does not allow a wikilink. This link is not for an external website and will render incorrectly if one is used. If the author is notable enough to have an article, then the website should be linked in that article's "External links" section.
Editors are added in the same manner using |editor-last= and |editor-first= through |editor-last4= and |editor-first4= and |editorlink= through |editorlink4=.
The use of authors modifies the display and order of the citation:
- Script error
- Script error
By default, if nine authors are defined, then only eight will show and et al. will show in place of the last author. To change the number of authors, see Display options. If four editors are defined, then et al. will show in place of the last editor; there is no display option for editors.
If the source provides no author, as is common with newswire reporting and the internal pages of company websites, and the organizational author would be the same as the work/site/periodical, or the publisher, use:
|author=
This HTML comment saves a lot of long-term Wikipedia editorial time by alerting fact-checking and citation-fixing editors (and bots) that the publisher source specifically did not name the author and that this information wasn't accidentally omitted from the citation here.
In particular, 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 professionally published citations in journals on that field use such a redundant citation style.
The main function of |author= being used for organizational citation is 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. Using this parameter to assert what you think was probably the collective author, when the source itself does not specify that body as the collective author, is original research and falsification of source verifiability and reliability.
Others
- others: Contributors other than author or editor; a description such as "Illustrated by Smith" or "Trans. Smith" may be included.
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.
It is important that |date= be used only for the full date; using a year only will create a malformed anchor when that feature is enabled.
Dates formats per WP:DATESNO:[Note 1]
- Do not wikilink.
- Use month before day or day before month styles and use them consistently throughout the article.
- Access and archive dates in references should be in either the format used for publication dates, or YYYY-MM-DD.
Titles and chapters
Titles containing certain characters will display and link incorrectly unless those characters are replaced or encoded.
| newline |
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- title The title of the source. Generally displayed in italics, except for a short work such as {{cite press release}} and cited articles in {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}} and {{cite web}}, where it is shown in quotation marks. Should consistently use title case or sentence case throughout the article, and should use title case unless the article is on a scientific, legal or other technical topic in which sentence case is the predominant style in journals on that topic. Subtitles are typically separated from titles with ": " though " – " is also used. Do not omit a leading "The" from the title. As with trademarks, Wikipedia does not attempt to emulate any stylistic "flourish" used in the title in its original publication, such as ALL-CAPS, all-lower-case, Small Caps, etc.; just use plain text. If the cited book (or whatever) is itself notable and has an article, it can be wiki-linked. This will make it impossible to use the "url" parameter to link to an external copy, so only do this when citing works that do not need to be externally linked. A link to the actual source is better than a link to a Wikipedia article about the source.
- chapter The chapter of the book, written in full. Displayed in quotes before the title. For websites arranged in sections the "at" parameter serves a similar function:
|at="Featured News" section
- 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.
- trans_title: If the book cited is in a foreign language, an English translation of the title can be given here. This field will be shown square brackets after the title and will be linked to
|url= if used.
- trans_chapter: Will be displayed in square brackets within the quotation marks which enclose the chapter field.
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=New York Times and |journals=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 should 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=NYTC.) Most professional and academic citation standards (and thus everyone familiar with any of them) do expect the publisher to be explicitly included, even where this may seem redundant. Adding it doesn't hurt anything, and eliminates the possibility that later editors will assume it was left out by mistake and waste time looking up the missing information. If the work is self-published, this is a very important fact about potential reliability of the source, and needs to be specified, with |publisher=self-published. When an exhaustive attempt to discover the name of the publisher (try whois for websites) fails, use |publisher= 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; doing so is a falsification of the verifiability of the source.
- location: Geographical place of publication, usually City, Country, or City, U.S. State; simply the city name by itself can be used for world-recognized cities like New York, London (except in articles about Canadian topics), Paris, Tokyo. Simply having a unique name doesn't mean it's globally recognizable; e.g., many people do not know where Mumbai is, especially if they are old enough that it was called Bombay for much of their lives. If in doubt, be more not less specific, since "Toronto, Canada" and "San Francisco, California" do not actually hurt anything.
Pages
- page: page in the source that supports the content
- pages: pages in the source that supports the content; separate page ranges with an en dash (–); separate non-sequential pages with a comma. Do not use this parameter to indicate the total number of pages in the source! That is not relevant information in a citation.
- at: For sources where a page number is inappropriate or insufficient; overridden by
|page= or |pages=.
- Examples: page (p.) or pages (pp.); section (sec.), column (col.), paragraph (para.); track; hours, minutes and seconds; many others: act, scene, canto, book, part, folio, stanza, back cover, liner notes, indicia, colophon, dust jacket
Edition identifiers
- edition: When the source has more than one edition. E.g. "2nd", "Revised" etc. The templates automatically displays " ed." after this parameter, so
|edition=2nd produces "2nd ed." Can be omitted if there is no content difference; e.g. if a book was identically published but for ISBN number and maybe different cover art, once in the UK and again in the US, don't indicate "US" or "UK" edition; or if citing minute:seconds of a film and the film itself is the same cut with the same running time in the regular edition and a "Special Limited Collector's Edition", don't cite the unusual version.
- series: When the source is part of a series, such as a book series or a journal where the issue numbering has restarted.[Note 2]
- volume: For a source published in several volumes. This field is displayed in bold after the title and series parameters. An alternative is to include the volume information in the title parameter after the main title.
- issue: When the source is one of a series that is published periodically.
External links
- url: Adds a link to the title
- chapterurl: Adds a link to the chapter.
- format: Format of the document at its URL (e.g., PDF, xls, etc.) Don't specify for HTML (implied as default). Do not use this parameter for completely different purposes, with annotations such as "fee required" or "reprint"; its intent is to notify readers what the file format is (e.g. in case some browsers might have trouble with it, or some might prefer to save the link to disk rather than open it in the browser). Notes about access restrictions, reprintings, etc., should be placed after the template, and before
</ref>.
Online sources
Links to sources are regarded as conveniences and are not required, except when citing Web-only sources. There are many digital libraries with works that may be used as sources.
- Links should be to full versions of the source.
- Online sources that require payment or subscription may be included per the verifiability policy.
Do not link to:
- Sites that do not have permission to republish the work or which otherwise violate copyright.
- Commercial sites such as Amazon.
- Reviews of the work.
- Very short extracts such as Google Books snippet view where there is not enough context to verify the content, unless the entire work is also freely available there. (See WP:BOOKLINKS)
Link formats
Links should be kept as simple as possible. For example, when performing a search for a Google Book, the link for Monty Python and Philosophy would look like:
- http://books.google.com/books?id=wPQelKFNA5MC&lpg=PP1&dq=monty%20python&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
But can be trimmed to:
- http://books.google.com/books?id=wPQelKFNA5MC
Pages
A direct link to a specific page may be used if supported by the host. For example, the link to page 173 of Monty Python and Philosophy on Google Books:
- http://books.google.com/books?id=wPQelKFNA5MC&l&pg=PA173
If the same source is reused with different pages, separate citations must be created. A way around this problem is to use {{rp}} to provide linked page number citations.
Special characters
URLs containing certain characters will display and link incorrectly unless those characters are encoded. For example, a space must be replaced by %20.
| sp |
" |
, |
' |
; |
< |
> |
? |
[ |
]
|
| %20 |
%22 |
%2c |
%3a |
%3b |
%3c |
%3e |
%3f |
%5b |
%5d
|
- Single apostrophes do not need to be encoded; multiples will be parsed as italic or bold markup
The link button File:Vector toolbar insert link button.png on the enhanced editing toolbar will encode a link.
Access date
- accessdate: The date the web link was accessed; only shows when a link is included.
Icons
URLs with certain filename extensions or URI schemes will apply an icon specific to that file type. This is done through MediaWiki CSS, not these templates.
Web archives
The original link may become unavailable. When an archived version is located, the original URL is retained and |archiveurl= is added with a link to an archived copy of a web page, usually from services like WebCite and the Internet Archive. |archivedate= must be added to show the date the page was archived, not the date the link was added. When |archiveurl= is used, |url= and |archivedate= are required, else an error will show. When an archived link is used, the citation displays with the title linked to the archive and the original link at the end:
- Script error
- deadurl: To change the order with the title retaining the original link and the archive linked at the end, set
|deadurl=no:
- Script error
Identifiers
Most templates support these identifiers:
Quote
- quote: Relevant text quoted from the source; enclosed in quotes. When supplied, the citation terminator (a period by default) is suppressed, so the quote needs to include terminating punctuation.
Anchors
- ref: Creates an anchor for use with Shortened footnotes and parenthetical referencing. These styles use in-text cites with a link that will jump to an anchor created by the CS1 template. Anchors are not enabled by default, they are created by use of
|ref=
-
|ref=harv: Creates an anchor of the format CITEREFauthorslastnameyear suitable for a {{harv}}, {{sfn}} etc. Examples:
- Script error
- Creates an anchor named
CITEREFHardcastle2006 which may be linked from {{harv|Hardcastle|2006|pp=12-34}}.
- Script error
- Creates an anchor named
CITEREFHardcastleReisch2006 which may be linked from {{harv|Hardcastle|Reisch|2006|pp=12-34}}.
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|ref=ID: Creates a custom anchor defined by ID. This is useful where the author and/or date is unknown. The {{harvid}} template may be used here to create an anchor suitable for a {{harv}}, {{sfn}} etc. For example, |ref={{harvid|Monty Python and Philosophy|2006}} creates an anchor which may be linked from {{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.
- author-mask: Primarily intended for use in bibliographies for some styles where multiple works by a single author are listed. It replaces the name of the first author with a strike-thru dash (—) author-mask em in length. If
|author-mask=1 then the dash will be one em in length and so on. Set author-mask to a text value to display a word instead:– for example, 'with'. You must still include the parameters for all authors for metadata purposes. Do not use in a list generated by {{reflist}} or <references /> as there is no control as to the order that references will display.
- author-name-separator: Changes the separator between last and first names; defaults to a comma (,)
- author-separator: Changes the separator between authors; defaults to a semicolon (;)
- display-authors: By default, the number of authors displayed is limited to 8; if 9 are provided, the ninth is displayed as "et al." This parameter allows display of fewer authors before the "et al." (e.g., {{para|display-authors|2); alternatively, the "et al." may be suppressed by the use of
|display-authors=9.
- lastauthoramp: When set to any value, changes the separator to use between the last two names in lists of authors to an ampersand (&). Defaults to a semicolon and space (; ), else
|author-separator= if set.
- postscript: The closing punctuation for the citation; defaults to a period (.); if the parameter is present, but blank, no terminating punctuation will be used. Ignored if
|quote= is specified.
- separator: The punctuation used to separate lists of authors, editors, etc. Defaults to a period (.); if the parameter is present, but blank, no separator punctuation will be used.
Subscription or registration required
Online sources that require subscription or registration are acceptable. In these instances, add {{subscription required}} or {{registration required}} directly after the CS1 template.
Printing
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.
Elements not included
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.
Tools
CS1 templates may be inserted manually or by use of tools:
Error checking:
Common issues
|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.
- 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 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.
Notes
- ↑ See also "Citation style" section in the "Citing sources" guideline. While the rules stated have usually been applied to citations using the templates described in this help page, they do not necessarily apply when using a printed style guide like APA style.
- ↑ "Some numbered series have gone on so long that, as with certain long-lived journals, numbering has started over again, preceded by n.s. (new series), 2nd ser. (second series), or some similar notation, usually enclosed in commas. (A change of publisher may also be the occasion for a change in series designation.) Books in the old series may be identified by o.s., 1st ser., or whatever complements the notation for the new series."[1]:14.132
References
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| | General templates | |
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| | Bot-filled templates | |
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