All information in Wikipedia articles should be verified by citations to reliable sources. Our preferred method of citation is using the "cite.php" form of inline citations, using the <ref></ref> elements. Using this method, each time a particular source is mined for information (don't copy word-for-word!), a footnote is placed in the text ("inline"), that takes one to the detail of the source when clicked, set forth in a references section after the text of the article.
In brief, anywhere you want a footnote to appear in a piece of text, you place an opening <ref> tag followed by the text of the citation which you want to appear at the bottom of the article, and close with a </ref> tag. Note the closing slash ("/"). For multiple use of a single reference, the opening ref tag is given a name, like so: <ref name="name"> followed by the citation text and a closing </ref> tag. Each time you want to use that footnote again, you simply use the first element with a slash, like so: <ref name="name" />.
In order for these references to appear, you must tell the software where to display them, using either the code <references/> or, most commonly, the template, {{Reflist}} which can be modified to display the references in columns using {{Reflist|colwidth=30em}}. Per our style guidelines, the references should be displayed in a separate section denominated "References" located after the body of the article.
This template is intended to assist users at the help desk, AfC help desk, the Teahouse, for replying to {{Help me}} requests and at other fora, where the basics of providing inline citations needs to be explained. It provides a visual guide to inline citations that some users may respond better to than a text explanation alone.
Usage
This template may be transcluded or substituted by prefixing "subst:" inside the template code. Thus you may use {{subst:Refref}} rather than {{Refref}}. However, given the quantity of code in this template, transclusion may be preferable to substitution.
The template does not include automatic signing. Please remember to sign by typing four tildes (~~~~) after the template syntax (or at the end of your accompanying post to which this template may be an add-on).
This template is collapsed by default. If you wish to disable this, substitute or transclude {{Refref/core}} instead.
Sister template
A more basic sister template exists at {{Refref2}}. It contains only the visual elements of this one, i.e., without the text explanation portion, and given its smaller footprint, is neither collapsed by default, nor hidden using a header bar. For comparison, the sister template's output is shown below:
