Wikipedia:Citation Templates - Variations

Variations

Wikipedia does not dictate a particular way to insert citations into an article. As a result, there are multiple ways to structure citations in an article; multiple ways to insert individual citations; and multiple ways to link short-form inline citations with the full-form citations in the bibliography, when using a style that calls for short-form citations.

There are three primary ways to format individual citations:

1. By hand. When using inline citations (see below), these are simply typed directly; however, when using shortened footnotes or parenthetical references, these can be surrounded with {{wikicite}} to ensure that the appropriate shortened references are linked to the full references below.
2. Using the Citation Style 1 templates, such as {{cite book}}, {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}}, or {{cite news}}.
3. Using the generic {{Citation}} template.

The main differences between the generic {{Citation}} template and the specific Citation Style 1 templates are:

1. The Citation Style 1 templates produce citations with individual sections (e.g. title, author, publisher, etc.) separated by periods, with a trailing period, while {{Citation}} separates sections with a comma and has no trailing punctuation. (However, this can be changed using the |separator= and |postscript= parameters.)
2. Not all Citation Style 1 templates can easily be replaced by the {{Citation}} template. Generally, any Citation Style 1 template of a general nature (e.g. book; web site; journal or newspaper article; article in an edited collection or encyclopedia; etc.) can be replaced, but specialized templates (court cases, comic books, video games, etc.) cannot very easily.
3. Some of the parameter names differ. For example, citing an article in an edited collection uses the misnamed {{cite encyclopedia}} template, with |title= for the article name and |encyclopedia= for the collection name; the equivalent parameters in {{Citation}} are named contribution and title, respectively.
4. When using parenthetical referencing, a Harv templates template that identifies a citation by author and year will automatically link to the appropriate citation elsewhere in the article if created using {{Citation}}. If created using Citation Style 1, however, a |ref=harv parameter must be added.

There are also at least three ways to structure citations as a whole in an article:

1. Inline citations. These simply place the citation inside of a ... reference, which inserts a small bracketed, superscripted number. When clicked on, it links to a correspondingly-numbered footnote (more properly an endnote) placed elsewhere in the article. The footnotes themselves are inserted using {{reflist}}, which is typically placed by itself in a Notes (or References) section near the end of the article. When there are multiple references to the same citation, typing can be saved by using ... the first time, and just elsewhere. When there are citations that differ only in page number, there are two alternatives: write all the citations out in full, including the page number, or use one citation without page numbers along with the {{rp}} template to add an inline page number after the small bracketed footnote number.
2. Shortened footnotes. Instead of the full-form citation appearing in the footnote, a shortened form appears, giving only the author and year (or in some styles, a shortened version of the article or book title), and page number if appropriate. The full citation appears later on, in a bibliography section. This usually follows directly after the footnotes, is titled "References" or "Bibliography", and contains all relevant citations, listed in alphabetical order. This style is especially appropriate when there are large numbers of references overall and frequent cases of multiple references to the same work, especially in the presence of differing page numbers.
3. Parenthetical references. These are conceptually similar to shortened footnotes, but the shortened reference appears inline in the text, in parentheses, rather than in a footnote.

When using shortened footnotes or parenthetical references, there are multiple ways to link the shortened and full-form references:

1. Don't link them. This happens by default when the shortened references are typed in by hand.
2. Insert manual links. These look like e.g. ]. The anchor #refPereira2006 is attached to the full-form citation by surrounding it with {{wikicite}} (if inserted by hand), or adding a |ref= parameter to the citation template.
3. Insert links using a Harv templates template, e.g. {{Harvnb|Pereira|2006|p=25}}. This will insert "Pereira 2006, p. 25" into the text and link it to the citation with the corresponding last name and year. As mentioned above, when using a Citation Style 1 template, the parameter |ref=harv must be added, but this is unnecessary for {{Citation}}. When using parenthetical references, the plain {{Harv}} template is used, which automatically inserts parentheses. Other variations format the page number or parentheses differently.
4. Use the {{sfn}} template for the whole of the footnote. The {{sfn}} template creates its own named ... tags: {{sfn|Pereira|2006|p=25}} is exactly equivalent to ], p. 25. which is itself equivalent to {{Harvnb|Pereira|2006|p=25}}.

See also WP:Footnotes and WP:Citing sources for general information, and WP:CITEX for specific examples of exactly how to write the code for various combinations of the above styles.