Help:Citing sources

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There's no need to cite the source of your information for something that (at least among people who are interested) is fairly well known. But to increase the credibility of your assertion of something that is little known (or disputed), citing an authoritative source is a big plus. The source may be a web page, a book, a magazine article, etc.

Just as when citing in a university assignment or manuscript for publication, there are various ways of citing sources within a Wiki. One that seems particularly handy creates footnotes and involves the use of two tags, <ref> (which must be closed) and <references /> (self-closing).

Let's suppose you have assertions (each of which we'll call "assertion") that you want to back up with footnotes (each of which we'll call "footnote"). And let's say for now that a good title for the footnotes is "Notes"

First, somewhere toward the end of the article, and after any section that you think might need an footnote, type:

==Notes==

<references />

Of course you're creating a new section, a section that consists of a single, self-closing tag.

Now go back to the main text. For each assertion, add a footnote like this:

assertion <ref>footnote</ref>

That is, write the content of the footnote at the place where you want its number to appear, and put this content between REF tags. You don't have to worry about numbering (or any later renumbering): this is all automatic.

For a longer explanation and more details, see this Wikipedia page, supplemented by this one; in which it's called "the Cite.php method".