Cormackm

Teahouse talkback: you've got messages!

Hello, Cormackm. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by David Biddulph (talk) 18:06, 26 March 2013 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template).

Your second question has a reply See Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#creating links.Moxy (talk) 19:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello, Cormackm, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• Introduction to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article
• Simplified Manual of Style

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! Moxy (talk) 19:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

• The blue bar below is a navigation template. Click "show" on the right to view an outline of Wikipedia's help pages. This template can be found at the bottom of most related pages.

Footnotes

The break down...... The easiest way to create an inline citation is with a footnote. You can create a footnote with Wiki markup, by adding ref tags around your source, like this:

<ref>Your Source</ref>

If you're adding the first footnote to an article, you also need to make sure that there is text that tells the software Wikipedia uses to display footnotes. That text will look like this:

{{Reflist}} or <references/>.

That text should be immediately below the section heading ==References==. If that section doesn't exist, you will need to add it (both the heading and either the "Reflist" or "references" text above). Place the new section near the bottom of the article, just above the "External links" section (if that exists).

Once you have saved your edit, the ref tags will convert your citation of a source into a footnote reference (like this one^[1]), with the text of the citation appearing in the References section at the bottom of the article.

If the citation you are placing between the ref tags as your source is a link to an external website, place the website address (URL) within single square brackets along with some text, which the reader will see as a link. For example:

<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/article_name.html Article in The New York Times]</ref>

Though it is not required, it is highly recommended to provide more information than that in a footnote. Here is a more complete footnote:

<ref>Name of author, [http://www.nytimes.com/article_name.html "Title of article"], ''The New York Times'', date</ref>

It is not recommended to use bare URLs for your external link references, because of link rot.

Although material that is from external websites is a common reference source, Wikipedia has no preference for online sources. If your source is a book, journal, magazine, newspaper article, documentary or other source, then you would place identification information about that source between the ref tags.

If you respond better to visual information, you may find the guide below useful (click show on the right hand side).

Visual inline citation guide

Formatting references using inline citations

Inline citation code; what you type in 'edit mode'	What it produces when you save
Two separate citations.<ref>Citation text.</ref><ref>Citation text2.</ref> Multiple<ref name="multiple">Citation text3.</ref>citation<ref name="multiple" /> use.<ref name="multiple" /> ==References== {{Reflist}}	Two separate citations. Multiple citation use. References_________________
Templates that can be used between <ref></ref> tags to format references {{Citation}} • {{Cite web}} • {{Cite book}} • {{Cite news}} • {{Cite journal}} • Others • Examples

Please see Wikipedia:Citing sources for further instructions on writing footnotes. Also, there are templates that help with the proper formatting of references (footnotes); see Wikipedia:Citation templates for further details.Moxy (talk) 19:16, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Teahouse talkback: you've got messages!

Hello, Cormackm. Your question has been answered at the Teahouse Q&A board. Feel free to reply there!
Please note that all old questions are archived after 2-3 days of inactivity. Message added by NtheP (talk) 20:23, 26 March 2013 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template).