All information in Wikipedia articles should have citations; that is, references to reliable secondary sources that back up the information in the article. It’s common to have references at the end of every sentence or item in a list, and even in the middle of a sentence!
When adding citations in Wikipedia, you don’t need to worry about formatting references according to any particular standard; just fill in the necessary information (like title, author, page numbers) and it will be formatted and placed in the reference list for you.
Many statements have been added to Wikipedia that do not have appropriate references, and those have been marked [citation needed] by other editors. Here is a list of statements related to our theme that need investigation:
Adding a citation
To add a new citation, put your cursor at the end of the phrase or sentence you are citing, and click the Cite button at the top of the editor:
This will give you a menu to select the type of resource where you found the information:
- Book – including print books or ebooks
- Journal – including print journals or electronic journals
- News – including newspapers and news web sites
- Website – other web sites (not of the previous type)
When you select the type of resource you are citing, you will see a form with the fields appropriate for that type. After filling in those fields, click the Insert button to add your citation, and then Publish/save your changes. Make sure to add an edit summary!
Using the same source multiple times
If you’ve found a good resource for your topic, you may use it to add information in several different places in the article. Once you (or somebody else) has added the citation as above, you don’t need to type it in again; you can re-use it by clicking the Re-Use tab in the Cite window. Click on the citation you want to use again, and click Insert to add the citation in the new place.
Automatic Citation
For some types of web resources, you can fill in the citation form automatically, by using the Automatic tab in the Cite window. Enter the URL or other identifier that you have for your resource, and click Generate. This does not always work, but may save you some time when it does! Click Insert to add a generated reference to the article, and make sure to Publish/save.
