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Help:Citation Style 2

Help page for citation templates

This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts WP:CS2 H:CS2 H:CITE2

Citation Style 2 (CS2) is a style applied to citations on Wikipedia. It is used by default in the general purpose citation template {{Citation}}, and available as an option in many other templates. The commonly-used citation templates have two style modes.^[1] These modes change how the citation is punctuated when it's rendered. CS2 primarily uses the comma as a separator, and it does not have a punctuation mark at the end of the citation. Citation Style 1 (CS1) uses the full stop as a separator and for terminal punctuation.^[2] For example:

CS2

Carroll, Lewis (1866), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, London: Macmillan

CS1

Carroll, Lewis (1866). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. London: Macmillan.

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 template; for example, to find the documentation for {{Citation}}, enter Template:Citation in the Search box.

With author

Elk, Anne (November 16, 1972), Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses, Monty Python's Flying Circus

Without author

Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses, Monty Python's Flying Circus, November 16, 1972

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)

By default, the {{Citation}} template uses CS2 formatting. To apply CS2 formatting to other citation templates, add |mode=cs2 to the template's parameters. For example, {{cite web}} uses CS1 formatting, but {{cite web |mode=cs2}} uses CS2 formatting.

Add {{cs1 config |mode=cs2}} to the article, preferably near the top of the page,^[3] to apply CS2 formatting to all citations on a page using Module:Citation/CS1.

The general purpose {{Citation}} template uses CS2 by default. It determines the citation type by examining which parameters are used. As with other citation templates, it can be used either in a footnote (between <ref>...</ref> tags) or in a section that lists sources. For example:

• User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors is a script that may be enabled to display errors when using shortened footnotes. (See Help:Shortened footnotes for details on links and anchors.)
• User:Nardog/RefRenamer will replace the names that the VisualEditor auto-generates for named references (":0") with names using the parameters from the citation template ("Smith-2015").
• Wikipedia:ProveIt is a gadget that offers a visual interface for editing and generating citation templates.
• User:Mesidast/Tidy citations.js normalizes spacing in all citations on a given page.
• User:Lingzhi2/reviewsourcecheck-sb.js is a script that will note which citations on a given page are inconsistent.