Guide to referencing  Click on show on the right of the orange bar to open contents  classnavbox collapsible collapsed styletextalign center border px margintop em fontsize  background ffefd   stylebackgroundcolor f  Using references citations   styleborder solid px silver padding px backgroundcolor white styletextalign left  Help another user by posting this to them Put substrefstart on their talk page or a relevant article talk page Alternatively use the link WPREFB which 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 its highly advisable to also include a reference to say where it came from Referencing may look daunting but its easy enough to do Heres a guide to getting started If you need any assistance let me know     Good references  A reference must be accurate ie it must prove the statement in the text To validate Mike Brown climbed Everest its no good linking to a page about Everest if Mike Brown isnt mentioned nor to one on Mike Brown if it doesnt 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Myspace Youtube fan sites and extreme minority texts are not usually acceptable nor is original research eg your own unpublished or selfpublished essay or research or another wikipedia article  Inserting a reference  The first thing you have to do is to create a Notes and references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 referenceReference 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 referenceReference 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  httpmediaguardiancouksitestoryhtml Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying The Guardian   Retrieved on   When uploaded it appears as Plunkett John Sorrell accuses Murdoch of panic buying The Guardian   Retrieved on   Note the single square brackets around the URL and the article title The format is httpURL 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