Help:References

This help page provides information on references or citation, specifically the process of and format of referencing or citing a source of information.

Basic concept
This wiki uses mediawiki and, as such, the referencing process makes use of the mediawiki's  tag. In order to cite source of information, users will be required to type in the tag around the source of information (e.g.  and place the tag at the end of the sentence. The basic concept of the   tag is that it inserts the text enclosed by the tag as a footnote in a designated section, which you indicate with the the   tag (HTML tag for references:  ).

If you don't include  tag at the end of the article, none of the footnotes will appear. Instead, an error message in red will appear at the end of the article, as a reminder to the editor to insert the  tag.

This page itself uses footnotes, such as the one at the end of this sentence. If you view the wikicode of this page by clicking "Edit this page", you can see a working example of footnotes.


 * Example:
 * According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big.
 * The Moon, however, is not so big.

Multiple uses of the same footnote
To give a footnote a unique identifier, use. You can then refer to the same footnote again by using a ref tag with the same name. The text inside the second tag doesn't matter, because the text already exists in the first reference. You can either copy the whole footnote, or you can use a terminated empty ref tag that looks like this:.

In the following example, the same source is cited three times.

This is an example of multiple references to the same footnote.
 * Example:

Such references are particularly useful when citing sources, if different statements come from the same source.

A concise way to make multiple references is to use empty ref tags, which have a slash at the end. Although this may reduce redundant work, please be aware that if a future editor removes the first reference, this will result in the loss of all references using the empty ref tags.

Columns
If you have a lot of references in the designated section, they can be placed in columns to save space and ease reading. Instead of using, just add the following code:

External link

 * Cite Code