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Help:Referencing for beginners with citation templates

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tomwsulcer (talk | contribs) at 16:57, 6 January 2010 (Created article as per discussion on Wikipedia talk:Referencing for beginners as per User:Tyrenius). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
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Here's how to reference almost everything on Wikipedia. Copy and paste the following immediately after what you want to reference:

<ref>{{cite news
| author =
| title =
| quote =
| publisher = ''''
| date =
| pages =
| url =
| accessdate =
}}</ref>

Simply put as much information as you can to the right of the equal signs. Example:

Inflation seems unlikely in 2010.<ref>{{cite news
| author = Patricia Sabatini
| title = Inflation unlikely to be a threat as economy emerges from recession
| quote = ...the Federal Reserve would continue to leave interest rates at record lows.
| publisher = ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette''
| date = October 16, 2009
| pages =
| url = http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09289/1005873-28.stm
| accessdate = 2010-01-05
}}</ref>Cite error: The <ref> tag name cannot be a simple integer (see the help page).

Reporter Patricia Sabatini goes to the right of the "author =". Put the publisher's name inside the quotes to italicize Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Leave fields like "pages =" blank if it doesn't apply. The accessdate is when you fetched the reference such as today; the date is when the article was published. The url is the line like ''http://www.etc''; copy and paste the url in if available. There are more fields possible like ISBN, co-authors which you can add; see citing sources.

That's it! You're done. When editing, you'll see your reference next to the text; but after saving, readers will only see a reference number there; your reference should appear below. If it doesn't, create a "References" section at the end of the page by adding this:

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

Experiment on sandbox pages or your user talk page. Good luck!

References

Further information

Note: Wikipedia permits different citation formats such as footnotes, parenthetical references, and inline URLs.