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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 template; 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:
|postscript=
(CS1 is a fullstop)CS2 templates present a citation generally as:
For example:
Dates are generally included by three parameters:
CITEREF
disambiguator|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:
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:
CITEREFElk1972
.|ref=ID
: Creates a custom anchor defined by ID. This is useful where the author and/or date is unknown.Error checking: