Guide to referencing Click on show on the right of the orange bar to open contents class navbox collapsible collapsed style text align center border 0px margin top 0 2em font size 100 background ffefd5 style background color f90 Using references citations style border solid 1px silver padding 8px background color white style text align left Help another user by posting this to them Put subst refstart on their talk page or a relevant article talk page Otherwise the link WP REFB goes to a help page I thought you might find it useful to have some information about references refs on wikipedia These are important to validate your writing and inform the reader Any editor can remove unreferenced material and unsubstantiated articles may end up getting deleted so when you add something to an article it s highly advisable to also include a reference to say where it came from Referencing may look daunting but it s easy enough to do Here s a guide to getting started Good references A reference must be accurate i e it must prove the statement in the text To validate Mike Brown climbed Everest it s no good linking to a page about Everest if Mike Brown isn t mentioned nor to one on Mike Brown if it doesn t say that he climbed Everest You have to link to a source that proves his achievement is true You must use reliable sources such as published books mainstream press and authorised web sites Blogs Myspace Youtube fan sites and extreme minority texts are not usually acceptable nor is original research e g your own unpublished or self published essay or research or another wikipedia article Inserting a reference The first thing you have to do is to create a Notes and references section unless it already exists This goes towards the bottom of the page below the See also section and above the External links section Enter this code Notes and references reflist The next step is to put a reference in the text Here is the code to do that It goes at the end of the relevant term phrase sentence or paragraph to which the note refers and after punctuation such as a full stop without a space to prevent separation through line wrap Whatever text you put in between these two tags will become visible in the Notes and references section as your reference Test it out Open the edit box for this page copy the following text inserting your own text where indicated paste it at the bottom of the page and save the page Reference test This is the text which you are going to verify with a reference Reference details go here Notes and references reflist End of text to copy and paste It should appear like this Reference test This is the text which you are going to verify with a reference Reference details go here Notes and references Information to include You need to include the information to enable the reader to find your source For an online newspaper source it might look like this Plunkett John Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying The Guardian 2005 10 27 Retrieved on 2005 10 27 When uploaded it appears as Plunkett John Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying The Guardian 2005 10 27 Retrieved on 2005 10 27 Note the single square brackets around the URL and the article title The format is Title of article Make sure there is a space between the URL and the Title This code results in the URL being hidden and the title showing as a link Use double apostrophes for the article title it is quoted text and two single quote marks either side of the name of the paper to generate italics Double square brackets round the name of the paper create an internal link a wiki