Template:CiteGeneral/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:CiteGeneral. It contains usage information, categories, and other content that is not part of the original template page.

Template:CiteGeneral invokes function generalref in Module:References using Lua.

This template is used to cite sources. It is specifically for web sites.

Usage

Common form for cases where little is known about authorship of the page (with current date)

{{CiteGeneral|url=|title=|accessdate=July 5, 2024}}

Using author (with current date)

{{CiteGeneral|url=|title=|author=|date=|accessdate=July 5, 2024|publisher=|archiveurl=|archivedate=|quote=}}

All parameters

{{CiteGeneral
| url = 
| title = 
| accessdate = 
| author = 
| last = 
| first = 
| authorlink = 
| coauthors = 
| date = 
| year = 
| month = 
| format = 
| work = 
| publisher = 
| pages = 
| language = 
| archiveurl = 
| archivedate = 
| quote = 
}}

Required parameters

• url: URL of online item.
• title: Title of the online item.

Optional parameters

Author

• author: Full name of the author of the content.
• first: Given or first names of the author.
• last: Surname of the author.
• authorlink: URL to link the author name to.
• coauthors: Co-authors of the content.

Dates and archiving

• date: Date of source being referenced (month dd year, e.g. July 5, 2024).
• month: Month of source being referenced (only used if year is also supplied, date takes precedence over both)
• year: Year of source being referenced (date takes precedence).
• accessdate: Date when the content pointed to by url was last verified to support the text being cited (month dd year).
• archiveurl: URL for an archived snapshot of the web page, e.g. - requires archivedate to be specified.
• archivedate: Creation date of the archived snapshot at the URL in archiveurl.

Further details

• format: Format of the work referred to by url, if non-HTML (e.g. PDF).
• language: Language in which the source is written, if not English.
• pages: Range of pages in the source that support the content.
• publisher: Name of the company that published the work being cited. Specifying both publisher and work is typically unnecessary.
• quote: Relevant text quoted from the source.
• work: Title (name) of the website (or its short URL if no plain-language title is discernible). Specifying both work and publisher is typically unnecessary.

Standard parameters

The following parameters are standard across all citation templates.

notes

Optional. This parameter allows you to add text beginning one space after the end of the citation. Having no formatting (meaning you will have to format it yourself), this area can be used for anything you require.

name

Optional. If you want to use this reference more than once, you must name it the first time you use it, then whenever you want to use it again, add {{NamedRef|name}} wherever you want it to re-appear.

group

Optional. This can be used to put the reference into a specific group, to separate it from other types of reference. See here for more on reference groups.