Help:Cite

Cite makes it possible to add footnotes to a page.

See  for technical details.

Usage
The basic concept of the &lt;ref> tag is that it inserts the text enclosed by the ref tags as a footnote in a designated section, which you indicate with the placeholder tag &lt;references />. This format cannot be used interchangeably with the older format — you must pick one or the other.

Additional placeholder tags &lt;references /> can be inserted in the text, and all &lt;ref> tags up to that point will be inserted there.

If you forget to include &lt;references /> in the article, the footnotes will not disappear, but the references will be displayed at the end of the page.

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

{| class="wikitable" ! width="50%" | Wikitext ! Rendering The Sun is pretty big. The Moon, however, is not so big.

Notes This is an example of multiple references to the same footnote.

Such references are particularly useful when citing sources, if different statements come from the same source. Any reused tag should not contain extra content, that will spawn an error. Only use empty tags in this role.

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.

Notes tag for the first part of the reference, and tagging the following parts with a tag  using the same name.

Example:

{| class="wikitable" ! width="50%" | Wikitext ! Result This is an example of merging multiple texts into the same footnote.
 * - valign="top"

References tag inserts the text of all the citations which have defined in  tags up to that point in the page. For example, based on the citations above, there should be reference for the note group.

{| class="wikitable" ! width="50%" | Wikitext ! Result
 * attribute is used to configure that behavior. On wikis with the default configuration, this will happen on every page; on others, you need to activate it.
 * attribute is used to configure that behavior. On wikis with the default configuration, this will happen on every page; on others, you need to activate it.
 * attribute is used to configure that behavior. On wikis with the default configuration, this will happen on every page; on others, you need to activate it.

In some language editions of Wikipedia, long reference lists may be placed using the template, which incorporates. It provides an optional parameter to display the reference list in multiple columns. For instance, the English, Hindi and Interlingua Wikipedias use the CSS selector  to make the reference text smaller than normal text.

Using templates in this way is strongly discouraged, for compatibility, performance, and functionality reasons.

If a page includes more than one  list, each list includes the   tags defined after the previous references list. If these references lists are produced by templates, each one lists the ref tags defined before the first references list, and there is an error message saying that there is a ref tag but not a references list.

Grouped references
This may be disabled by  if desired.

The following example generates separate reference lists for citations and miscellaneous footnotes:

{| class="wikitable" ! width="50%" | Wikitext ! Result
 * According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big In fact, it is very big
 * According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big In fact, it is very big
 * According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big In fact, it is very big

Notes element.

Citing different parts of the same source
When several parts from the same work are used as references in an article, you can cluster them in the reference section. This gives readers a way to identify which references originate from the same source. It also allows you to cite different parts of the same source without repeating the entire source every time.

Separating references from text
In-text references make it easy to copy the text to another page; on the other hand, they make it hard to read. References containing a lot of data, quotes or elaborate citation templates can make up a significantly larger fraction of the source than the text that will actually be visible. To avoid this, recent versions of the extension allow moving some or all of the references into the  section, to the place where they will actually appear to the reader.

Thus, the code above will have the same output as the first example above, although the numbering and order of the references will not in general be the same.

Substitution and embedded parser functions
Since Cite's  tag is parsed before MediaWiki's parser functions (e.g.  ) or variables (e.g.  ) or before  , these will not work inside of citation references. Instead, you have to use the magic word.

{| class="wikitable" ! width="50%" | Wikitext ! Result Foo bar baz… Foo bar baz…

to define a wiki-wide heading which would be automatically inserted before each references list. In MediaWiki 1.29, this system message was removed. A hacky way to enter a headline now is to add the following code to MediaWiki:Common.js:

If you only need a text heading (no link or other active elements) you could add the following to MediaWiki:common.css (Chrome 4, IE9, FF 3.5, Safari 3.1, Opera 7):

Customization
The format of the output of  and   is almost completely customizable through MediaWiki messages, that can be modified, for example, through the MediaWiki namespace depending on the configuration of the wiki.

For a list of messages that control the output of  and   and the values, if any, that are passed to them ($1, $2, $3 ...), see an up-to-date listing of the default values that can be obtained directly from MediaWiki.


 * Incomplete list
 * cite_reference_link_key_with_num
 * key
 * num
 * cite_reference_link_prefix
 * cite_reference_link_suffix
 * cite_references_link_prefix
 * cite_references_link_suffix
 * cite_reference_link
 * ref ID
 * backlink ID
 * count to display
 * cite_references_link_one
 * Used to format the source list that
 * }
 * }


 * MediaWiki:Cite references link many


 * MediaWiki:Cite references link many format

Replacing $2 with $3 changes the links from 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 to a, b, c etc…

Searching for these pages for the first time will result in no matches. Simply click "Create this page" to edit the code. The changes will not show up until a page with references is rebuilt.

Set reference and reference number highlighting
Add the following code to the MediaWiki:Common.css page.

Error messages
If the  or  tags are used incorrectly, the Cite extension will add an error message to the page.

These messages will usually be in bold red text.

This section lists the error messages and explains how to fix the problems.

Technical information
Internal messages are generated by the  extension and shown as a MediaWiki message.

See the Parser hooks section of Special:Version for the installed version of Cite.php.

These messages are in the MediaWiki namespace and can be modified only by admins.