Wikipedia:Training/For students/Citing books

When referencing books, it is imperative to cite the page numbers. Providing the specific page (or pages) allow other editors to verify what is being stated. Without the specific page(s), the process of verification becomes tedious and virtually impossible with certain non-digitized scientific volumes. This tutorial will show how to properly reference different pages from a book (or from multiple books). This style of referencing is used in a number of Wikipedia's featured articles.

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Citing a single page from a single book

You will learn to produce a footnote that looks as follows:

This is something that would be followed by a reference.

References

Books

• Doe, John (2000). Fictional book title. The Publisher. ISBN 0-203-16812-7.

Let's begin by looking at the raw wikitext:

This is something that would be followed by a reference.<ref>Doe, p. #</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}
;Books
{{refbegin}}
* {{Cite book|title= Fictional book title |last=Doe |first=John |year= 2000 |publisher=The Publisher |isbn=0-203-16812-7}}
{{refend}}

The different portions of the wikimarkup have been highlighted below and are defined in the next section:

This is something that would be followed by a reference.<ref>Doe, p. #</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}
;Books
{{refbegin}}
* {{Cite book|title= Fictional book title |last=Doe |first=John |year= 2000 |publisher=The Publisher |isbn=0-203-16812-7}}
{{refend}}

Reference

• <ref>Doe, p. #</ref> -This is the reference. Provide the author's last name followed by a comma, followed a space followed by p. (or pp. if multiple pages) followed by another space and the page number (or page numbers). For example:
  • <ref>Lee, p. xxi</ref>
  • <ref>Lee, p. 10</ref>
  • <ref>Lee, pp. 10,12,14</ref>
  • <ref>Lee, pp. 10-12</ref>
  • You can also cite parts of a book that aren't pages, such as covers, or sections.
    • <ref>Lee, section 6b</ref>
    • <ref>Lee, back cover</ref>

References section

==References==
{{reflist}}
;Books
{{refbegin}}
* {{Cite book|title= Fictional book title |last=Doe |first=John |year= 2000 |publisher=The Publisher |isbn=0-203-16812-7}}
{{refend}}

• ==References== - Per the Wikipedia Manual of Style, the References section denotes where the references are, and is the last section on the page (if there is an external links section, references is the second-to-last section on the page, with external links being last).

• {{reflist}} - The {{reflist}} citation template is what generates the footnotes. The footnotes appear based on the order that the references first appear in the article. The template is placed at the top of the References section.

• ;Books -This indicates where the books portion of the sources is listed.

• {{refbegin}} and {{refend}} are templates which apply a certain visual style to content placed in between them. Place the citation templates in between. Be sure to prepend each citation template with an asterisk *.

• * {{Cite book|title= Fictional book title |last=Doe |first=John |year= 2000 |publisher=The Publisher |isbn=0-203-16812-7}} -This is the book citation template. Place it in between {{refbegin}} and {{refend}}.

Citing multiple pages from a book

You will learn to produce a footnote that looks as follows:

This is something that would be followed by a reference. This is fact number 2.

This is yet another fact.

References

Books

• Doe, John (2000). Fictional book title. The Publisher. ISBN 0-203-16812-7.

The raw wikitext is seen below:

This is something that would be followed by a reference.<ref>Doe, p. 5</ref> This is fact number 2.<ref name="Doe, p. 7-8">Doe, p. 7-8</ref> 

This is yet another fact.<ref name="Doe, p. 7-8"/>

==References==
{{reflist}}
;Books
{{refbegin}}
* {{Cite book|title= Fictional book title |last=Doe |first=John |year= 2000 |publisher=The Publisher |isbn=0-203-16812-7}}
{{refend}}

The references are highlighted below:

This is something that would be followed by a reference.<ref>Doe, p. 5</ref> This is fact number 2.<ref name="Doe, p. 7-8">Doe, p. 7-8</ref>

This is yet another fact.<ref name="Doe, p. 7-8"/>

Named references

The above example makes use of "named references." This is when the reference is given an identifying name, a marker of sorts, so that the identifying name can be used in place of typing out the reference. This tells the wiki when the same reference is used, so that it will appear only once in the references section.

• <ref name="Doe, p. 7-8">Doe, p. 7-8</ref> - This is a named reference with the initializing value of "Doe, p. 7-8". A named reference is one where the name="something" is portion of the reference is set.

• <ref name="Doe, p. 7-8"/> - This is a named reference whose "name" parameter is set to "Doe, p. 7-8". Note the forward slash / is this named reference <ref name="Doe, p. 7-8"/> This forward slash / tells the wiki that the named reference is already defined elsewhere.

Citing multiple pages from multiple books

To Do..Smallman12q (talk) 00:18, 4 September 2012 (UTC)