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This is an
essay on the
Wikipedia:Citing sources page. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
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The linking practice described herein has been deprecated for over a decade per WP:CS:EMBED. For current best citation practices, see Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout § Notes and references. |
An embedded citation or embedded link uses an unnamed link to a URL for an inline citation. The link creates a full-size bracketed number within the rendered text of the sentence, e.g., [1], that takes the reader directly to the external website of the reliable source, rather than to the references section at the end of the article. The term embedded here refers to an external link, while inline refers to any shorthand part in the text which is a referent to the full citation at the end of the article.
An embedded citation offers a one-click-away presentation of the source to the reader. (It does not use reference tags to create a link to a footnote, where the reader is then presented with a link to the source.) Unfortunately, this creates two problems. (1) It is then possible to have only the inline part of the embedded citation without the full citation part of the embedded citation in the appendix of the article. (See below for how the full citation is important for article maintenance.) (2) Also the association between the inline part of the embedded citation and the corresponding full citation part of the embedded citation, in the list at the end of the article, is not readily apparent from the rendered text. All the reader sees is a number in square brackets.
Embedded citations that fail to include the full citation part are better than no citation and are easy to implement, but the use of embedded links for inline citations is deprecated. For details about the other inline citation methods see Wikipedia:Citing sources.
Embedded citations are offered as one option for citing sources on Wikipedia. This approach is to place a numbered external link in the text of the article like this: [2] and also put a full citation in a References section.
For every source, you need to add two links. The first link is a plain URL after the statement that it supports, and the second is a full citation in the references section.
Adding this text during an edit:
In 2009 scientists reached one trillion electron volts. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8385891.stm]
Would appear as the following, in the article, after the edit was saved:
Do not use this style:
A full citation may be composed by hand or using one of the citation templates developed for aiding in this process. Both techniques are shown and used below with the same result.
Adding this text during an edit:
* Rincon, Paul. "[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8385891.stm Large Hadron Collider sets world energy record]", ''BBC News'', November 30, 2009. Retrieved on November 30, 2009. * {{cite news |last=Rincon |first=Paul |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8385891.stm |title=Large Hadron Collider sets world energy record |work=BBC News |date=November 30, 2009 |accessdate=November 30, 2009}}
Would appear as the following, in the article, after the edit was saved:
One advantage of embedded links is that it is easy for readers and editors to check sources by clicking on the links and jumping immediately to the cited articles. Another advantage is that links are easy to create and maintain.
A disadvantage is that many embedded links soon become dead links, often without sufficient information being available to find another copy, since many editors fail to include a copy of the full citation at the end of the article. Another disadvantage is that the full citation is not easily connected to the statement. To find the full citation, the reader has to determine which URL is at the relevant statement in the article, and then search through all of the references to figure out which one includes the same URL. Finally, it is difficult or impossible to use "dead tree" reliable sources anywhere in these articles, since there is no URL to place at the end of the statement. This style is therefore more commonly used in under-developed articles, and a more flexible style is chosen when the article is expanded.