Note that the use of these templates is not required.

Use of these templates is manual, authors may copy-and-paste the desired template into their text, and erase fields they do not need. Remember the ((double curly braces)), and a vertical bar between fields.

Introductory ("Beginner" and "Tutorial") pages such as the CITING SOURCES tab in the Wikipedia:Tutorial page do not necessarily cover templates. Another template which covers all these uses may be found at Citation. For more information see Wikipedia:Citing sources.

If you are using the inline reference citation style in your article (using <ref> tags to create footnotes), then these templates would go inside the <ref> tags as follows:

<ref>((cite book|author=...))</ref>

See full list of citation templates at Wikipedia:Citation templates. For other templates, see Wikipedia:Template namespace.

Citing a book[edit]

((cite book))

Not complete
Longer version Most common fields
((Cite book
 | last = 
 | first = 
 | author-link = 
 | author = 
 | author2 = 
 | editor = 
 | others = 
 | title = <!-- required -->
 | orig-year = 
 | url = 
 | format = 
 | access-date = 
 | edition = 
 | date = 
 | year = 
 | publisher = 
 | location = 
 | language = 
 | isbn = 
 | pages = 
 | chapter = 
 | chapter-url = 
 | quote =
))
((Cite book
 | last = 
 | first = 
 | author-link = 
 | year = 
 | title = <!-- required -->
 | publisher = 
 | location = 
 | isbn = 
 | pages = 
))

Citing a journal[edit]

((cite journal))

Not complete
Longer version Most common fields
((Cite journal
 | first = Jean
 | last = Elford
 | author-link = 
 | author = 
 | author2 =
 | date = 1974
 | year = 
 | title = The Icelanders - Their Ontario Year
 | quote =
 | journal = The Beaver
 | volume = 
 | issue = 
 | pages = 53–57
 | doi =
 | id = 
 | url = 
 | format =
 | access-date =
 ))
((Cite journal
 | author = 
 | date = 
 | year = 
 | title = <!-- required -->
 | journal = 
 | volume = 
 | issue = 
 | pages = 
 | doi = 
 | id = 
 | url = 
 ))

Citing a news article[edit]

((cite news))

Not complete
((Cite news 
 | first = 
 | last = 
 | author-link =
 | author = 
 | author2 =
 | title = 
 | url = 
 | format = 
 | work = 
 | publisher = 
 | pages = 
 | page = 
 | date = 
 | access-date = 
 | language = 
 | quote = 
))

Citing the web[edit]

((cite web))

Not complete
((Cite web
| url = <!-- required -->
| title = <!-- required -->
| access-date = 
| author = 
| last = 
| first = 
| author-link = 
| date = 
| year = 
| work = 
| publisher = 
| pages = 
| format = 
| language = 
| quote = 
| archive-url = 
| archive-date = 
))

This template is specifically for web sites which are not news sources. See also citation templates for more on templates for citing open-source web content in Wikipedia articles. Here are some convenient examples.

Common form for cases where little is known about authorship of the page

((Cite web |url= |title= |access-date= |format= |work= ))

Using author

((Cite web |url= |title= |access-date= |author= |author-link= |author2= |date= |year= |format= |work= |publisher= |pages= |language= |archive-url= |archive-date= |quote= ))

Using last, first

((Cite web |url= |title= |access-date= |last= |first= |author-link= |author2= |date= |year= |format= |work= |publisher= |pages= |language= |archive-url= |archive-date= |quote= ))

The most common parameters are as follows. See also the complete documentation in Template:Cite web.