Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles

Is the article worth it?
Before placing templates on a page it is worthwhile to consider whether it should in fact be included in Wikipedia according to What Wikipedia is not. Some articles can be tagged for speedy deletion or marked as an article for deletion.

Dates
It is useful to add the date of the request (or sometimes, a bot will assist by doing it automatically) by appending |date= month year to the template code, like this: to produce this:

United States government attribution templates
These templates can be added to articles (close to the end of the article, in the References or External links section, for example). Before adding the template to an article, check the details of the usage—some templates require parameters such as a URL. Most of these templates add the articles to the category Wikipedia articles incorporating text from public domain works of the United States Government.

Other
Some of the reference types below use named fields (such as Title=Electric Power Monthly). In these references, you must use the exact field name (capitalization matters). Fields are separated with pipe (|) characters. The order of the fields does not matter.

Wikis
For interwiki translation and other copying, see Copying within Wikipedia.

Citations for footnotes and for linking
The following examples are examples of Footnotes from Ref/examples are rendered as a template in the following table. These references can be used with the citations above to create a link from the text to the references.

Citations of specific sources
Notes:
 * See also Template messages/Links for components of online citations such as DOIs.
 * ISBNs are autolinked by the Wikipedia software; see ISBN.
 * RFC references such as "RFC 2821" are also autolinked.
 * PMIDs are also autolinked; see PMID.

Citations of generic sources
fr:Wikipédia:Modèles/Sources ja:Wikipedia:Template メッセージ/検証可能性