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Structure to follow to cite a Wikipedia article in MLA style: “Article Title.” Website Title, Publisher (if different from website title), Day Month Year published or updated, URL. Reference example: “Special Relativity.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 July 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity.
In any case, you should not cite Wikipedia itself, but the source provided; you should certainly look up the source yourself before citing it. If there is no source cited, consider a different method of obtaining this information. All encyclopedias, whether traditional paper ones or online ones, have errors.
“Article title.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Published date day, month, year, Article URL. Accessed Accessed date day, month, year. The final formatted citation should look like this: Wikipedia Contributors.
When citing Wikipedia in-text, all you need is the article title. This is because Wikipedia is a collaborative website and there is no author or published date. The citation, which will be in parentheses, will have the title of the page or article in quotations.
Wikipedia is not a reliable source for citations elsewhere on Wikipedia. Because it can be edited by anyone at any time, any information it contains at a particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or just plain wrong. … Edits on Wikipedia that are in error are usually fixed after some time.
The English Wikipedia’s Verifiability policy requires inline citations for quotations, whether using direct or indirect speech, and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. Editors are also advised to add in-text attribution whenever a source’s words are copied or closely paraphrased.
Is it a good idea to cite Wikipedia in your research paper? Generally speaking, no. In fact, if you’re writing a paper as a class assignment, your teacher may specifically prohibit citing Wikipedia. Scholarly papers should generally rely on peer-reviewed and other scholarly work vetted by experts in the field.
In APA Style (7th edition), only the first word of the title is capitalized, and there is no period after the URL. The in-text citation includes the title of the article (shortened if necessary) and the year. The date you include is therefore the date of the revision you accessed, the URL that of the specific revision.
When a work has no identified author, cite in text the first few words of the article title using double quotation marks, “headline-style” capitalization, and the year.
Wikipedia as a source
Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, is a tertiary source. However, Wikipedia and sources that mirror or source information from Wikipedia may not be used as secondary or tertiary sources. Wikipedia articles are sometimes used as primary sources in articles about Wikipedia.
Steven Pruitt | |
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Years active | 2004–present |
Known for | Most edits on the English Wikipedia |
Relatives | Peter Francisco (sixth-great grandfather) |
Students agree that Wikipedia may be the easiest to site to access information and it is especially helpful in history classes. … The consensus is that students should be allowed to use the website to gather information as pages are, for the most part, fairly accurate.
MSN Encarta is another online encyclopedia that bypasses the problems that plague Wikipedia. All entries have been written and fact-checked by professionals and the site will never be vandalized. However, like Encyclopedia Britannica Online, this site requires a subscription fee.
If you want to use Wikipedia’s text materials in your own books/articles/web sites or other publications, you can generally do so, but you must comply with one of the licenses that Wikipedia’s text is licensed under. Many of the media files on Wikipedia are also reusable.
Always cite Britannica as your source when you use information from it in a report or research paper. When you quote an article, name the article, the Britannica Library the article comes from, the Britannica software product, the copyright, and the date you accessed the article, as shown in the following examples.
Structure to follow to cite a Wikipedia article in APA style: Article title. (Year last updated). Retrieved Month Day, Year, from URL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNhiK4_pMGk
In BibTeX syntax, author = “Wikipedia contributors” indicates an author with the first name Wikipedia and the last name contributors , and may then be formatted as, e.g., contributors, W. .
Research shows that Wikipedia is prone to Neutral Point of View violations caused by bias from its editors. … They found that editors are slightly more likely to contribute to articles which exhibit an opposite slant to their own—a tendency that the authors called opposites attract.
Wikipedia is a wiki, meaning anyone can edit nearly any page and improve articles immediately. You do not need to register to do this, and anyone who has edited is known as a Wikipedian or editor. Small edits add up, and every editor can be proud to have made Wikipedia better for all.
Missing element | Solution |
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Author | Provide the title, date, and source. |
Date | Provide the author, write “n.d.” for “no date,” and then provide the title and source. |
Title | Provide the author and date, describe the work in square brackets, and then provide the source. |
Using In-text Citation
APA in-text citation style uses the author’s last name and the year of publication, for example: (Field, 2005). For direct quotations, include the page number as well, for example: (Field, 2005, p. 14). For sources such as websites and e-books that have no page numbers, use a paragraph number.
APA in-text citation style uses the author’s last name and the year of publication, for example: (Field, 2005). For direct quotations, include the page number as well, for example: (Field, 2005, p. 14).
NOTE: The in-text citation for works with three or more authors is shortened to the first author’s name followed by et al. and the year. References: Author Surname, First Initial.
General Use of Et Al.
Specifically, articles with one or two authors include all names in every in-text citation; articles with three, four, or five authors include all names in the first in-text citation but are abbreviated to the first author name plus et al.
If multiple citations for the same source are included in the article, and you are using <ref> tags, you can name the footnote to link to the same note repeatedly. To do this, add name=”X” to the first <ref> tag, so that it looks like this: <ref name=”X”> .
To include a reference to the source of quoted material which is contained within a <blockquote> or <q> element, use the cite attribute on the element. Typically, browsers style the contents of a <cite> element in italics by default. To avoid this, apply the CSS font-style property to the <cite> element.
The abstract is the second page of a lab report or APA-format paper and should immediately follow the title page. Think of an abstract as a highly condensed summary of your entire paper. The purpose of your abstract is to provide a brief yet thorough overview of your paper.