Texas Referencing is key to making Wikipedia reliable and trustworthy. When working with references: DO: Use inline citations (<ref></ref> tags or parenthetical referencing). Keep citations near the material they support. Say where in the source the information came from. Use a consistent reference style within each article. Consider using citation templates to create a consistent style. Tag insufficiently-sourced material with an appropriate inline tag. Tag insufficiently-sourced articles with an appropriate header. DON'T: Don't cite unreliable sources. Don't cite a source you haven't seen for yourself. Don't add material that's not supported by sources. Don't embed external links in the body of articles. Don't add references for obvious information. Don't use all-numeric date formats other than YYYY-MM-DD. Don't change an established reference style without consensus. See also Wikipedia:Tutorial/Citing sources Wikipedia referencing Policies and guidelines Verifiability Biographies of living persons Identifying reliable sources Medicine Citing sources Scientific citations General advice Find sources Combining sources Offline sources Overview of referencing styles Citing sources Citation Style 1 Citation Style 2 Citation Style Vancouver LSA Comics Citation templates Reflist template Inline citations Embedded citations Footnotes Parenthetical referencing Punctuation and footnotes Shortened footnotes Nesting footnotes Footnote1 Footnote2 Footnote3 Footnote4 Help for beginners Citations quick reference Introduction to referencing Referencing with citation templates Referencing without using templates Referencing dos and don'ts Advanced help Cite link labels Citation tools Cite errors Cite messages Converting between references formats Reference display customization References and page numbers Help templates {{Edit refs}} {{Reflist newuser}} {{Refref}} {{Refref2}} {{Refstart}} Italics indicate deprecated or obsolete content.