For a long time, our guidance page called Help:Referencing for beginners (Shortcut: WP:REFBEGIN), was one of the worst help pages we had here! So I wrote this page as an alternative. Thankfully, in May 2020 WP:REFBEGIN was improved. But I've decided to offer this as an alternative set of instructions for inserting a new reference to any article that already has a section called 'References'.
Can't be bothered to read it? Then watch this video instead:
Be aware that inline citations are inserted into an article immediately after each factual statement they support. But cleverly, the software then displays just a small, superscript citation number after that article text (like this[1]), but then displays the complete reference against its corresponding number at the bottom of the page, within the 'References' section. You do not need to edit the References section at all - the work is done for you.
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