User:Sross (Public Policy)/Citing sources 1 script

Editing basics: Citing sources, part 1

This tutorial demonstrates the bare essentials of how to cite sources with footnotes on Wikipedia pages. You can try out the mechanics of creating footnotes in

your own user sandbox page. If you don't already have a sandbox, go to the page

"Help:Sandbox tutorial" for instructions on starting one.

Now, let's

edit the sandbox. First, we need to create a section for the footnotes.

Create a new section at the bottom of the page by adding

two equals signs, then

the name of the section--say, notes--then

two more equals signs. Now we add a

special bit of code beneath the section header--a template--to mark where the footnotes get displayed: it's the word

reflist inside

two sets of curly brackets.

Now let's add a citation. This page includes the claim that

"being bold is important on Wikipedia". We should back that up, with a footnote citing

the "Be bold" guideline, which says that when you find a problem on Wikipedia, you should be bold and fix it.

In the most basic form, a footnote consists of

the text of the footnote between

opening and closing ref tags. So, right after the sentence about being bold, we add

a ref tag, then

our citation: "Be bold guideline. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved on such-and-such date", then

a closing ref tag.

Now, enter an edit summary and save the page, and we can

see the result. The

numbered superscript appears where we added the ref tags, and that links to the

corresponding text of the citation in the notes section. The next tutorial

demonstrates how to use the

cite function in the editing toolbar

which is a way to

automatically create

well-formatted footnotes. Until then,

be bold...

and cite often.