Help:Citation Style 2
This guide needs improvement and expansion. |
Citation Style 2 (CS2) is a method of referencing Wikipedia articles produced by the {{Citation}} template. All of the templates that belong to CS2 and to Citation Style 1 (CS1) are processed and rendered by the CS1 Lua module suite. There are various benefits to using a template, most notably that doing so produces a consistent look.
You are not required to use CS2 or any other citation template. As of October 2016[update], Wikipedia:Citing sources § Variation in citation methods (WP:CITEVAR) states:
Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference, to make it match other articles, or without first seeking consensus for the change.
When you use any template, please consider reviewing its documentation. You can find it at the template's page in the template namespace by searching for Template:
plus the name of the citation; for example, to find the documentation for {{Citation}}, enter Template:Citation
in the Search box. You might need to scroll down a bit to find it.
Style
Citation Style 2 differs from Citation Style 1 in these specific style characteristics:
- uses a comma to separate individual elements of a rendered citation (CS1 is a fullstop)
- terminal punctuation is omitted from the rendered citation unless overridden by
|postscript=
(CS1 is a fullstop) - automatically sets
|ref=harv
unless overridden by a different value or the keywordnone
(CS1 does not set|ref=harv
)
How the templates work
CS2 templates present a citation generally as:
- With author:
- author (date), title, publisher, identifiers
- Without author:
- title, publisher, date, identifiers
For example:
- Elk, Anne (November 16, 1972), Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses, Monty Python's Flying Circus
- Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses, Monty Python's Flying Circus, November 16, 1972
Dates
Dates are generally included by three parameters:
- date: Full date of publication edition being referenced, in the same format as other dates in citations in the same article. Must not be wikilinked.
- OR: year: Year of publication edition being referenced
- month: Name of the month of publication. If you also have the day, use date instead. Must not be wikilinked.
- origyear: Original publication year, for display alongside the date or year. For clarity, please supply specifics, for instance
origyear=First published 1859
ororigyear=Composed 1904
. This parameter only displays if there is a value for year or date.
Dates formats per WP:DATESNO:
- Do not wikilink
- Use month before day or day before month styles and use them consistently throughout the article
- Access and archive dates in references should be in either the publication date format, or YYYY-MM-DD
Anchors
Shortened footnotes and parenthetical referencing may create links that will jump to an anchor created by the CS2 template. Anchors are always created but may be modified by use of |ref=
. The standard is formatted as CITEREFauthorslastnameyear
. For example:
- Elk, Anne (November 16, 1972), Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses
- Creates an anchor named
CITEREFElk1972
.
|ref=ID
: Creates a custom anchor defined by ID. This is useful where the author and/or date is unknown.
Tools
Error checking:
- User:Ucucha/HarvErrors is a script that may be enabled to display errors when using Shortened footnotes or parenthetical referencing.