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Hello, Crooner62. 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 Margin1522 (talk) 14:07, 4 August 2014 (UTC). (You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{teahouse talkback}} template).Reply

Hi, glad to help. About the article you're editing, I see that you have a special situation there. There are a lot of cites to the same book, titled Self-Portrait. So what they did is use a feature that I didn't explain, namely that <ref> tags can have names. That way you only need to write the full cite once, and use the name the second and following times.

The problem is that this doesn't do page numbers. The person who left all of the "Page needed" notices wants the exact page for each reference. But as it happens, there is special technique that is perfect for this, and it's real easy. There are two steps, and I'll explain them.

Step 1 First, find where it says this:

Tierney never forgot his acts of kindness.<ref name="selfportrait">''Self-Portrait''. Tierney and Herskowitz (1979). Wyden Books. pp. 1, 9-10, 14, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25-26, 27, 33, 36, 38, 65-66, 91, 97, 101, 119, 131, 133, 141-42, 144, 150-51, 164-65, 192-192, 207.<!-- ISBN needed --></ref>

Change that to this. (In this example, I'm assuming that the page for the first cite is page 1). The key to this technique is the {{rp}}, which we will be using later as well.

Tierney never forgot his acts of kindness.<ref name="selfportrait">''Self-Portrait''. Tierney and Herskowitz (1979). Wyden Books. </ref>{{rp|1}}

That was the first step, which handled the first cite.

Step 2 The second step is to go through and find all the places where it says
<ref name="selfportrait"/>{{page needed|date=January 2014}}.

For each of those places (my browser says there's 24 of them), we're going to change
{{page needed|date=January 2014}}
into an {{rp}} tag with the correct page number.

For example, like this:

  • ''[[Leave Her to Heaven]]'' (1945).<ref name="selfportrait"/>{{rp| 9-10}}
  • who died young.<ref name="selfportrait"/>{{rp|14}}
  • physical education instructor.<ref name="selfportrait"/>{{rp|19}}

If you've got the same edition, these are probably the same page numbers that we deleted earlier, when we edited the first cite.

When you're all done, the result should look like this for each cite.
physical education instructor.[4]:19

This is a pretty advanced technique. It's not hard, but most editors don't know this! If you have any problems, just leave a comment here at your Talk page, and we'll see if we can get it to work. -- Margin1522 (talk) 01:43, 6 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Thank you so much!! This is wonderful!

I have also followed the suggestion to post my intention to change text/add quotes so that nobody feels like I've randomly played around with their work. So far, I haven't received any replies, but I'd rather prepare and follow the etiquette (and do this right) from the start.

As soon as I have time (I'll wait a couple of days for other editors to make comments) I will apply the changes you detailed. I did see those page-specific notes on my second or third exploration of the rules, but it has helped me tremendously to have you go through all of this with such detail and care. Thank you very much for your generosity. I feel like I can make contributions to Wikipedia in future that will be meaningful and accurate, but only if I learn the right protocol and don't get whelmed at the start!

All the best, Doug 72.88.135.175 (talk) 09:46, 7 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

My pleasure, and good luck! --Margin1522 (talk) 18:13, 8 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

I am sorry to have delayed so long - we were traveling and had a family emergency that interrupted day-to-day plans for several weeks. I come back to this feeling a bit dazed. I suddenly can't figure out how to track which page numbers go to which references. In addition, the page numbers seem untrustworthy: for instance, there should be no "Page 1" reference because the first written page is #3! [This book is Tierney's auto-bio written with the help of a professional writer. I don't believe there has been more than one edition. Regardless, I know that I have the original as I bought it when it first came out.] I don't mind going through the article and finding the exact pages for each quote, but it is going to take me a long time to do so. I am reluctant to take away the current citation which lists all the page numbers when I can't replace it with 100% accurate informaiton. Do you have any suggestions? Thank you, Doug Crooner62 (talk) 05:19, 22 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi, and welcome back. I don't think there's any problem with the edition, as long as you list the complete publishing data -- author, title, date, publisher, city. If you've got the first edition, that's the best. As to locating the page numbers, I think you'll have to just go through and locate each passage in the book. It's easy when there's a "quote", but if the article is just citing facts then you may have to use your judgment as to which page to cite for that fact. --Margin1522 (talk) 08:08, 22 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for the reply. I will be fine. Guess I just got a bit whelmed! (A former colleague had a great linguistic dream: to expose "overwhelmed" as the redundancy that it is. "Whelmed", she explained, means overcome. "Overwhelmed" translates as "over overcome"!) Doug :o) Crooner62 (talk) 05:40, 25 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

June 2018

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  Welcome to Wikipedia. We appreciate your contributions, but in one of your recent edits, it appears that you have added original research, which is against Wikipedia's policies. Original research refers to material—such as facts, allegations, ideas, and personal experiences—for which no reliable, published sources exist; it also encompasses combining published sources in a way to imply something that none of them explicitly say. Please be prepared to cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. Unfortunately, Wikipedia articles are not reliable sources per WP:WPNOTRS. Thank you. INeedSupport(Care free to give me support?) 20:32, 24 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! I don't remember how to use this coded language properly; I will find a better source. Apologies! Crooner62 (talk) 21:22, 24 June 2018 (UTC)Crooner62Reply