User talk:Francescagiordano
Welcome![edit]
|
Guide to referencing[edit]
Click on "show" to open contents.
| Using references (citations) |
|---|
|
I thought you might find it useful to have some information about references (refs) on wikipedia. These are important to validate your writing and inform the reader. Any editor can removed unreferenced material; and unsubstantiated articles may end up getting deleted, so when you add something to an article, it's highly advisable to also include a reference to say where it came from. Referencing may look daunting, but it's easy enough to do. Here's a guide to getting started.
A reference must be accurate, i.e. it must prove the statement in the text. To validate "Mike Brown climbed Everest", it's no good linking to a page about Everest, if Mike Brown isn't mentioned, nor to one on Mike Brown, if it doesn't say that he climbed Everest. You have to link to a source that proves his achievement is true. You must use Reliable sources, such as published books, mainstream press, authorised web sites, and official documents. Blogs, Myspace, Youtube, fan sites and extreme minority texts are not usually acceptable, nor is Original research, e.g. your own unpublished, or self-published, essay or research.
The first thing you have to do is to create a "Notes and references" section. This goes towards the bottom of the page, below the "See also" section and above the "External links" section. Enter this code:
The next step is to put a reference in the text. Here is the code to do that. It goes at the end of the relevant term, phrase, sentence, or paragraph to which the note refers, and after punctuation such as a full stop, without a space (to prevent separation through line wrap):
Whatever text you put in between these two tags will become visible in the "Notes and references" section as your reference.
Copy the following text, open the edit box for this page, paste it at the bottom (inserting your own text) and save the page:
(End of text to copy and paste.)
You need to include the information to enable the reader to find your source. For a book it might look like this:
When you upload it, it will appear like this:
Make sure you put two single quote marks round the title and not one double quote mark. An online newspaper source would be:
When you upload it, it will appear like this:
Note the single square brackets around the URL and the article title. The format is:
Make sure there is a space between the URL and the Title. This code results in the URL being hidden and the title showing as a link. Use double apostrophes for the article title (it is quoted text), and two single quote marks either side of the name of the paper (to generate italics). Double square brackets round the name of the paper create an internal link (a wikilink) to the relevant wikipedia article. Apostrophes must go outside the brackets. The date after The Guardian is the date of the newspaper, and the date after "Retrieved on" is the date you accessed the site – useful for searching the web archive in case the link goes dead. Dates are wikilinked so that they work with user preference settings to display the date in the format the user wishes. You can use newspaper articles which are not online, but which you have found in a library or elsewhere—in which case leave out the information which is not relevant. It would be formatted like this:
You may prefer to use a citation template to compile details of the source. The template goes between the ref tags and you fill out the fields you wish to. Basic templates can be found here: Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles/Citation quick reference
The first time a reference appears in the article, you can give it a simple name in the <ref> code:
The second time you use the same reference in the article, you need only to create a short cut instead of typing it all out again:
You can then use the short cut as many times as you want. Don't forget the /, or it will blank the rest of the article! A short cut will only pick up from higher up the page, so make sure the first ref is the full one. Some symbols don't work in the ref name, but you'll find out if you use them.
You can see refs in action in the article William Bowyer (artist). There are 3 sources and they are each referenced 3 times. Each statement in the article has a footnote to show what its source is.
The above method is simple and combines references and footnotes into one section. A refinement is to put the references in their own section and the footnotes which apply to them in a separate section. This reduces the amount of coding you have to put into the main article text. See Harriet Arbuthnot for an example of the way this is done.
More detailed information can be found at:
I hope this helps. If you need any assistance, let me know. |
This article has been deleted as one which is promotional in nature and requires a rewrite to become encyclopedic. Please also see WP:AUTO and WP:COI. Tyrenius (talk) 07:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I have created a sandbox at User:Francescagiordano/Draft 1 so you can work on the article. Information needs to be neutrally written, verified from reliable sources, without personal knowledge, vague terms or flattery. Also notability has to be demonstrated. Please study the writing guides at the top of the page. If it's not an autobiography or COI, I find it odd that you know so much about the artist and this seems to be your only interest in wikipedia. I suggest you work on a wider range of topics to gain experience. You might like to look at some articles I've written for a model: