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 HELP:CS1 WP:CS1

This page in a nutshell: This is an introductory how-to for Wikipedia's most frequently used citation style. It does not cover every option of every citation template. See individual templates' documentation (e.g. at Template:Cite journal) for details beyond this basic cheatsheet.

This help page has testcases demonstrating various uses.

Citation Style 1 (CS1) is a collection of reference citation templates that can be modified to create different styles for different referenced materials. Its purpose is to provide a set of default formats for references on Wikipedia. It includes a series of templates that in turn use Module:Citation/CS1.

The use of CS1 or of templates is not compulsory; per WP:CITESTYLE:

Wikipedia does not have a single house style. Editors may choose any option they want; one article need not match what is done in other articles or what is done in professional publications or recommended by academic style guides. However, citations within a given article should follow a consistent style.

WP:CITEVAR additionally states:

If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it; if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page.

CS1 uses (in addition to Wikipedia's own Manual of Style) elements of The Chicago Manual of Style and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, with significant adaptations.

There are a number of templates that use a name starting with cite; many were developed independently of CS1 and are not compliant with the CS1 style. There are also a number of templates that use one of the general use templates as a meta-template to cite a specific source.

To be compliant with CS1, a template must:

• Use Module:Citation/CS1 or one of the templates listed below.
• Use a period as a punctuation mark to separate fields and end the citation.
• Use a semicolon as a punctuation mark to separate authors and editors.
• Format the title of longer works in italics.
• Format the title of short works such as chapters in quotes.

General use

The following is a list of templates that implement Citation Style 1 for one or more types of citations but are not restricted to any specific source.

Specific source

There are a number of templates that are CS1 compliant, because they use a CS1 template as a base, but are tied to a specific source; these are listed in Category:Citation Style 1 specific-source templates.

CS1 uses a series of templates that provide a consistent output. The main difference is in parameters optimized for the subject. For example, {{cite book}} has fields for title and chapter, whereas {{cite journal}} has fields for journal and title.

This help page uses the names most commonly used across the templates series; see each template's documentation for details.

CS1 templates present a citation generally as:

• With author:

Author (n.d.). "Title". Work. Publisher. Identifiers.

• Without author:

"Title". Work. Publisher. n.d. Identifiers.

(where "n.d." could also be any other valid date formatted per the MOS)

Authors

An author may be cited using separate parameters for the author's surname and given name by using |last= and |first= respectively. If a cited source has multiple authors, subsequent authors can be listed in the citation using |last2= and |first2=, |last3= and |first3=, etc. For symmetry with the other numbered parameters, |last1= and |first1= are available as well, as shown in the following example: