Adding references and citations is an important part of improving an article. It lets other editors verify that the information you've added is accurate.

We'll go into more detail about how to add citations and what sources are good ones to cite later on in the Adding Citations training.

For now, take a look at this illustration of how to add a citation in the Visual Editor:

The gif shows the citation tool automatically creating a citation from a URL. You can also manually enter fields for a citation and one will be generated for you. Once you've created it, you can re-use it throughout the article.

To re-use an existing reference, place your cursor in the body of the text where you want to add the new reference for that citation. Then open the “Cite” menu and find the “Re-use” item.

The Visual Editor will also automatically generate a “Reference” section at the bottom of the page from the citations you've entered, keeping track of all the sources you've cited so far.