Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Citing a source - How-to

Here is a quick how-to correctly cite a source on Wikipedia.

Here is the way I learned to do this, go to a page that has it done correctly, copy that and paste it into the page you want to use it.  You can then use this template and paste in the correct info. Its a bit tedious but it does work well. 

<ref>{{cite web|last=Hyman|first=Ray|title=''Testing Natasha''|url=http://www.csicop.org/si/show/testing_natasha|publisher=[[Skeptical Inquirer Magazine]]|accessdate=5/22/12|month=May/June|year=2005}}</ref>

Make sure you hit "preview" and look at the citation to make sure it looks correct before you hit save.

The next easiest way to cite a source is to use the template dropdown box.  Click on the "Cite" area on the far right side.



Click on Templates, and you will see the dropdown menu.  Select the one that fits your citation (usually "cite web") but check the all out.



Here is what it looks like. Just fill out the form.  Sometimes I just use "title", "URL", "Publisher" and "Access date".

 


 When you want to use the same citation in separate paragraphs you need to do the following.  See how I have changed the citation to include something called "Grotheinterviewpt2" (you get to decide on the name to use)

<ref name="Grotheinterviewpt1">{{cite web|url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8VAOzcXGc4|title=Ray Hyman - The Life of an Expert Skeptic, Part 1 | For Good Reason|publisher=[[JREF]]|date=2012-01-20 |accessdate=2012-05-21}}</ref>

<ref name="Grotheinterviewpt2"/>

This is the code, you can find many examples of this on the Ray Hyman and Jerry Andrus pages.

Here is the way it looks on the actual footnote.  Look at the little "a" and "b" at the beginning.



As usual if you have questions please contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com




1 comment:

  1. There's a plugin called Prove it that automates most of this and makes it even easier.

    http://proveit.cc.gatech.edu/

    ReplyDelete