This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts WP:CS2 H:CS2 H:CITE2

This guide needs improvement and expansion.

Citation Style 2 (CS2) is a method of referencing Wikipedia articles produced by the ((Citation)) template. All of the templates that belong to CS2 and to Citation Style 1 (CS1) are processed and rendered by the CS1 Lua module suite. There are various benefits to using a template, most notably that doing so produces a consistent look.

You are not required to use CS2 or any other citation template. As of October 2016^[update], Wikipedia:Citing sources § Variation in citation methods (WP:CITEVAR) states:

Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference, to make it match other articles, or without first seeking consensus for the change.

When you use any template, please consider reviewing its documentation. You can find it at the template's page in the template namespace by searching for Template: plus the name of the citation; for example, to find the documentation for ((Citation)), enter Template:Citation in the Search box. You might need to scroll down a bit to find it.

Citation Style 2 differs from Citation Style 1 in these specific style characteristics:

• uses a comma to separate individual elements of a rendered citation (CS1 is a fullstop)
• terminal punctuation is omitted from the rendered citation unless overridden by |postscript= (CS1 is a fullstop)

CS2 templates present a citation generally as:

• With author:

author (date), title, publisher, identifiers

• Without author:

title, publisher, date, identifiers

For example:

• Elk, Anne (November 16, 1972), Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses, Monty Python's Flying Circus
• Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses, Monty Python's Flying Circus, November 16, 1972

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. Discouraged in favor of date, except in the rare case that all of the following conditions are met:
    1. the publication-date format in the template is YYYY-MM-DD
    2. the citation requires a CITEREF disambiguator
• orig-date: Original publication year, for display (in square brackets) after the date (or year). For clarity, please supply specifics, for instance |orig-date=first published 1859 or |orig-date=composed 1904. This parameter displays only if there is a value for date (or year).

When a source does not have a publication date, use |date=n.d. or |date=nd

Dates formats per WP:DATESNO:

• 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 publication date format, or YYYY-MM-DD

Anchors

Shortened footnotes and parenthetical referencing may create links that will jump to an anchor created by the CS2 template. Anchors are always created but may be modified by use of |ref=. The standard is formatted as CITEREFauthorslastnameyear. For example:

Elk, Anne (November 16, 1972), Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses

Creates an anchor named CITEREFElk1972.

• |ref=ID: Creates a custom anchor defined by ID. This is useful where the author and/or date is unknown.

Error checking:

• User:Ucucha/HarvErrors is a script that may be enabled to display errors when using Shortened footnotes or parenthetical referencing.