For a long time, our guidance page called Help:Referencing for beginners (Shortcut: WP:REFBEGIN), was one of the worst help pages we had here! So I wrote this page as an alternative. Thankfully, in May 2020 WP:REFBEGIN was improved. But I've decided to offer this as an alternative set of instructions for inserting a new reference to any article that already has a section called 'References'.

Can't be bothered to read it? Then watch this video instead:

Be aware that inline citations are inserted into an article immediately after each factual statement they support. But cleverly, the software then displays just a small, superscript citation number after that article text (like this^[1]), but then displays the complete reference against its corresponding number at the bottom of the page, within the 'References' section. You do not need to edit the References section at all - the work is done for you.

First choose your editing tool

• Every editor will inevitably be using one of our two editing tools (either "Source Editor" (which uses 'wikimarkup') or "Visual Editor") to add text. Both of these editing options have an obvious Tools menu at the top of the page, albeit with slightly different appearances.
• When you edit a page, and want to insert a reference, just look for the Tool button labelled "Cite".
• Position your cursor in the article at the end of the factual statement that you want to add a new reference to. (This is usually the end of a sentence, but occasionally you might need to insert one mid-way through. This is OK. Now, simply click the "Cite" button to reveal a box (a simple template) into which you can enter all the author, title, date, publisher, url details, etc., of your reference.

These two editing tools vary slightly in how they operate:

A) In Source Editor (which you will have used for editing the Teahouse page) you first click "Cite" and then select a further Template button on the left hand side of the editing toolbar. This lets you choose the most appropriate template into which you enter the reference details, according to whether you're citing a journal, a book, a newspaper or a website. There's also a Preview button to let you see what your reference details will look like before you decide to click the "Insert" button to add it into the page.

• To avoid having to manually enter all the reference fields in the 'Cite template' window, look for the tiny button beside some fields (e.g. URL, ISBN), which is a good way to quickly fill out some of the fields. This means that you can paste in a value (like a URL copied from your browser) in the field, click the button, and it will attempt to look up and fill in some of the fields for you (there may also be a few seconds delay in working these out). It often misses out date fields, and sometimes gets author names confused, but it still saves time. But you will need to check that every field matches the source. For online sources, though not paper books, don't forget to add the 'Access date', which is the date when you last checked the availability of the reference, usually today's date.
• Click Preview to see the result before you click Insert to add the reference as an inline citation.

B) Alternatively, in the Visual Editor, if you click the "Cite" button, it starts by offering to let you paste in a URL or an ISBN number to a reference source, and then attempts to automatically look up the reference details for you. It is also not perfect, so manually checking and tweaking to get the best reference is advisable. Being aware that you can add reference details from within either editing tool is something that's not really made terribly obvious in the Help page, referred to above.

Although you insert the detail of your reference right after the factual statement in the editor, be aware that the full reference text appears automatically at the bottom of the page in a sub-section marked "References". All that appears "inline" within the article is a small number in square brackets at the end of the relevant sentence. This mark corresponds with the number that appears in the References section. So please don't try to add your references into that section .. it won't work like that!

Re-using a reference, again and again

Using Source Editor: If you think you might want to re-use a reference later, you'll need to give it a short, easy to remember name the first time you add that reference via one of our templates. Then, on subsequent uses, you 'call it up' by that name, without having to re-enter all the details. As at 2019 you cannot yet enter a 'reference name' with Visual Editor, so it's much easier to switch over and do this in the Source Editor. Just look for the box labelled 'Ref Name' in the reference template you've chosen to use. See WP:REFNAME for a full explanation of how to then reuse your named reference.

Users of Visual Editor might like to know that they can reuse any reference again by clicking the Re-use tab in the Add a citation window (or you can copy and paste the reference number). But because the software simply allocates a semi-numeric number to each reference (e.g. :0, :1, :2, etc) this is not helpful for future editors who prefer to have a meaningful name-prompt. So please try to use Source Editor for your references - you might eventually decide you like this more powerful editing tool!

Adding page numbers to an inline citation

under construction:

If your source is a book, journal or some online publication, please specify the actual page number(s) in your citation that supports that statement. In other words, please don't put in the entire range of pages of the publication. Instead, you should only give the page number(s) that include the factual statement you are referring to so. In this way another user can easily find and verify it without having to wade through the entire publication.  

Although the 'Cite' template allows you to include page number(s), this is not helpful if you need to reuse the same reference to support different statements within the article that are found on different pages in your source. In this case, leave out the page number from the actual reference, and instead add a page number immediately afterwards. To do this, use the ((rp)) template. This lets you add specific page numbers immediately afterwards, like this: First fact from book^[1]: 29 Second fact from same book^[1]: 114, Third fact from same book.^[1]: 486 The text you need to add to achieve this using Source Editor is, simply: ((rp|114)) As you can see below, the publication name only displays once, but has the small letter a,b,c, etc. in front of it, to shows these multiple uses of the one source.

How to add a 'References' section if an article doesn't yet have one

For inline citations to work properly, the article needs a sub-section called 'References' towards the bottom of the page. If the page you're editing hasn't already got one, it's easy to add using Source Editor just by typing the following bit of 'wikimarkup' on two separate lines:

==References==
((reflist))

Alternatively, using Visual Editor, place your cursor at the start a new blank line. At the Tools menu, click the drop down box next to the Paragraph icon, and select Heading. You'll notice a thin line appearing to run across the page, so simply type 'References' (without the apostrophes) to add a heading name, and press return. This will add a new section with that title (there must only ever be one References section within any article.)

On the next line we need to add a special template. So, click Insert from the Tools menu and select Template. Type 'reflist' (without the apostrophes) to select the template needed to ensure the inline citations display appear here, and click Insert to add it. Job done!

Just remember: although your inline citations will appear under the 'References' section, you never edit them here. You do that inline within the article text, and the software rather cleverly reads the citations you've inserted within the article and displays them all there.

Adding to an existing reference

To be frank, correcting anything other than minor errors in an existing citation is a bit fiddly for beginners. As you will need to have prior knowledge of the names of the extra fields to add, it's often best to start again from scratch. My advice is to use Source Editor for anything but the simplest references, making sure to preview it before you insert it into the article. Remember to delete the old citation, or you'll accidentally duplicate things!