Template:Citation style/doc

A maintenance template which may be used on article pages to indicate an article in need of citation or referencing cleanup.

Usage

{{Citation style |reason=specify reason|date=June 2024}}

When to use

This template should be used only on articles that have sources.

It may be used with {{Refimprove}} or other check references templates. This template should not be used with stubs.

The most common correct use of this template is to identify an article that uses more than one major citation style (e.g., half the citations use ref tags, and half are parenthetical citations).

Do not place this template on articles containing all parenthetical citations, a previously acceptable citation style that is now deprecated per WP:PARREF.

Wikipedia's guidelines generally prohibit editors from changing from one acceptable form of inline citations to another without consensus, especially for reasons of personal preference or to make one article match the style in another article.

This template may be removed by anyone who fixes the problems with confusing citation styles.

Parameters

All parameters are optional:

• |1=section – set to section to indicate that the template applies to just the section where it is placed. By default, the template is placed at the to and applies to the entire article. Any word may be used, e.g., |1=paragraph, |1=table, and so on.

• |reason= may be used to provide more details on some of the aspects that should be addressed for the given article. Alias: |details=.

• |date= – add Month, year; for example: June 2024. This helps auto-categorization of the article into a subcategory of Category:Wikipedia references cleanup. A bot will add it, if you forget.

• |small=left – add this to reduce the banner to a small, flush-left box. Other values (such as 'no', 'yes', 'right') are invalid, and will not work as expected.

Categorization

This template will categorise tagged articles into Category:Wikipedia references cleanup and Category:Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify.

This template is a self-reference.

This template should not be substituted.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData documentation for this template used by VisualEditor and other tools.

Citation style

Use this cleanup template to indicate that an article has an unclear citation style.

Template parameters

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Month and year	date	The month and year that the template was placed (in full). "{{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}" inserts the current month and year automatically. Example January 2013 Auto value {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}	Line	suggested
Reason	reason details	The reason why the article has an unclear citation style Example it uses multiple citation styles	String	optional
Affected area	1	Text to replace the word "article", usually "section" Example section Auto value section	String	optional
Make template small	small	Enter "left" here to make the template box small and aligned to the left. Example left Auto value left	Line	optional

Tracking categories

• Category:All articles needing references cleanup (0)
• Category:All articles covered by WikiProject Wikify (0)

Redirects

• {{Citationstyle}}
• {{Citation-style}}
• {{Cleanup-citation}}
• {{Cleanup-references}}
• {{Cleanup-refs}}
• {{Ref-cleanup}}
• {{Reference style}}
• {{Reference-style}}
• {{Refstyle}}

See also

• Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup/Verifiability and sources
• WikiProject Citation cleanup