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.
((cite book))
| 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 = )) |
((cite journal))
| 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 = )) |
((cite news))
((Cite news | first = | last = | author-link = | author = | author2 = | title = | url = | format = | work = | publisher = | pages = | page = | date = | access-date = | language = | quote = ))
last, first((cite web))
((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.
((Cite web |url= |title= |access-date= |format= |work= ))
((Cite web |url= |title= |access-date= |author= |author-link= |author2= |date= |year= |format= |work= |publisher= |pages= |language= |archive-url= |archive-date= |quote= ))
((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.
last, first. Don't wikilink these; instead use author-link to link to the appropriate wikipedia article. Does not work with URLs. More authors can be added as author2 author3 etc. as can first, last pairs of parameters. When there are multiple authors, both author2-link and author-link2 allow links to multiple authors' Wikipedia pages.