Help talk:Citation Style 1

combined location and publisher in |publisher=

Recently I have been encountering templates like this one:

{{Cite book |first=Garth |last=Watson |title=The Civils |publisher=London: Thomas Telford Ltd |page=251 |year=1988 |isbn=0-7277-0392-7}}

where the location of the publisher and the name of the publisher are both shoehorned into |publisher=. Doing this corrupts the template's publisher metadata:

&rft.pub=London%3A+Thomas+Telford+Ltd

when it should be:

&rft.place=London&rft.pub=Thomas+Telford+Ltd

This search (times out) finds about 6100 articles where {{cite book}} has |publisher=<some text>:<some other text>. That isn't a perfect search; it finds stuff like |publisher=[[:ja:講談社現代新書]] but Lua code can do better.

Should we catch these and put them in a maintenance category?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

A maintenance category sounds like a good idea. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:14, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Maintenance to start, yes. After a few AWB runs, we'll have a better idea of what sort of crap is left in it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:50, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, too. Some botly cleanup of this might be possible to an extent, but I see junk entries in conflicting formats sometimes, e.g. not just "London: Penguin" but "Penguin: London", "Penguin (London)", "London, Penguin", "Penguin London", etc. It would probably eliminate a large blob of them, though, to look for "publisher=" (with extraneous spacing collapsed), followed by major publishing cities (like London, Edinburgh, Paris, Leiden, Milan, Barcelona, New York, Chicago, Boston, etc.) followed by colon-space or space-colon-space, followed by alphanumerics that indicate the actual publisher.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

In the sandbox. The test is constrained to {{cite book}}, {{cite encyclopedia}}, and {{citation}} without a periodical parameter. The text strings on either side of the colon may be wikilinked:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |publisher=London: Virgin Books}}

Title. London: Virgin Books.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

{{cite book/new |title=Title |publisher=[[London]]: Virgin Books}}

Title. London: Virgin Books.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

{{cite encyclopedia/new |title=Title |publisher=London: [[Virgin Books]]}}

Title. London: Virgin Books.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

{{citation/new |title=Title |publisher=[[:en:London|London]] : [[Virgin Books]]}}

Title, London : Virgin Books{{citation}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

Articles with this maintenance issue will be categorized in Category:CS1 maint: Publisher location. Better name?

There are publisher names that have a colon:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |publisher=29:11 Publications}}

Title. 29:11 Publications.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

The maintenance message can be suppressed for these with the accept-as-written markup:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |publisher=((29:11 Publications))}}

Title. 29:11 Publications.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:10, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

This is mostly caused by using Citoid with Worldcat. Izno (talk) 03:26, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

identifier limits

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T389105

You may have noticed that Category:CS1 errors: PMC is beginning to populate. Usually it's a simple matter of updating the value at c:Data:CS1/Identifier limits.tab. Alas, not this time. Something at commons or at MediaWiki has broken. If you click on the Identifier limits.tab link you end up waiting for more than a minute before MediaWiki gives up and shows the Service Temporarily Unavailable screen. Module:Citation/CS1 can still read the limit values by way of the lua library mw.ext.data.get() function call.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:21, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Not sure what the above is about because I checked member of that category and from a random sampling of 5-6 of them, they all work here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:24, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

The error message is Check |pmc= value and is showing because those templates have |pmc= values that exceed the configured limit of 11900000. The usual and intended fix is to edit c:Data:CS1/Identifier limits.tab at commons to update the parameter's limit.

Something at commons is broken and access to the identifier limits data table by way of that link does not work. That link is the only way to update the limit for PMC (and for all of the other identifiers that have limits). If the breakage remains for long enough, |oclc=, |osti=, |pmid=, |rfc=, |ssrn=, and |s2cid= will also start showing this same error message.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:06, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I have managed to update the PMC limit. How I did it is described at the phabricator ticket.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:35, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Split frequently-misused trans-title

|trans-title= is only for citing translated sources not our own translations. Editors disagreed in 2021 and 2023 about whether to allow Wikipedian |trans-title=s, perhaps to fulfill WP:RSUEQ. However, I have observed the continued practice of copying and pasting from Google Translate over the past year. I propose splitting |trans-title= into |machine-trans-title=, |human-trans-title= and |source-trans-title= so that it becomes clear which ones are machine translations need cleaning up. 216.58.25.209 (talk) 01:13, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

@216.58.25.209: Forgive me if I'm misinterpreting this, but doesn't [1] say the exact opposite? Nigel Ish said That applies if you are citing the original, non-translated work, in which case the original title goes in |title= and an Enlish [sic] translation can (if necessary) go in |trans-title=. If you are citing a translation of the work into English, which has an English language title, then the English-language title goes in the title field. I interpret this to mean that the trans-title parameter is supposed to be used if the source that is cited is not in English, but you should not use it if you are citing a professional translation of the work. To clarify, do you have an issue with machine translation itself? If so, we've already a template, {{Rough translation}}, for badly machine translated content in general. Grumpylawnchair (talk) 01:28, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, the problem is that I had to fix 2 obvious errors in a giant machine-translated edit today. Even if I can read Cyrillic, I don't speak Macedonian, so I don't know how many non-obvious errors are left. The absence of |trans-title= behaves like a redlink to attract human translators, but too many editors are using Google Translate so a template solution is needed.

The proposed |machine-trans-title= would be the equivalent of tagging with {{Rough translation}}, which seems to be mainly for prose. 216.58.25.209 (talk) 01:47, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Those two were hand-generated by myself and I double-checked with a dictionary. Those were typos. But I see your point. Grumpylawnchair (talk) 01:49, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

By "hand-generated" I mean I translated them myself. Grumpylawnchair (talk) 01:50, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I was probably too sloppy while typing and I'll look over them again. Thanks for the heads up regardless. Grumpylawnchair (talk) 01:52, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

For this article (Kočani nightclub fire), I'll see if I can find any native Macedonian or Serbian speakers to double check. Grumpylawnchair (talk) 01:56, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think we should allow purely machine-translated titles. If you don't have the fluency to get it right and don't have a proper source for the translation then leave it untranslated. If we shouldn't allow it we shouldn't have parameters that, by their existence, encourage it. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:57, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Agree, since we don't allow purely machine translated articles/prose either per WP:MACHINETRANSLATION. Grumpylawnchair (talk) 04:02, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

After Grumpylawnchair's explanation about her translation slips, is there an issue anywhere that needs addressing? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:11, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

I posted here not her talk page because as I explained above, the problem is the trend not her. I previously encountered this worrying trend involving a different editor at Talk:2024 Spanish floods/Archives/ 1 § Use trans title for refs in Spanish. 216.58.25.209 (talk) 21:24, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Maybe we should introduce a template like {{Rough translation}} specifically for bad translations in refs? Grumpylawnchair (talk) 21:49, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Support. Inline or ambox?

Btw, I currently detect machine translations by pasting them into Google Translate and looking for exact matches; I make my translations slightly different in word order and synonyms to mark them as human. Thus, if desired, a bot could apply that template. 216.58.25.209 (talk) 22:28, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Probably inline, like we've got for dead links and unreliable sources. My concerns are on how to access Google's API in the first place and about the failure rate for such automated activity. Let's take a three word title in Polish, "Ja jako lesbijka" (source), most people would (humanly) translate that as "Me as a lesbian" ("I as a lesbian" doesn't feel grammatically correct, at least to me), so it would be inaccurate to flag that as bot-generated. I feel like such a bot would be more trouble than it is worth, and would conflate somewhat literal human editors with machine translation. Also, people who speak a language fluently sometimes use Google translate to save time, but check the results afterward. IMO Google Translate ≠ automatically bad, as long as you have enough skill in the language to check the results. Grumpylawnchair (talk) 22:37, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

My parameter creation proposal was intended to just mark the machine translations people are already adding. I was about to go to WP:EF/R next to ask for a warning when adding that parameter, but both editors are extended-confirmed.

I have an idea that wouldn't encourage machine translation: How about we edit the TemplateData of each {{cite xxx}} so that |trans-title= clearly indicates "do not use machine-translation" in the description and "Human-translated title" in the label? 216.58.25.209 (talk) 21:54, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

No offense, but a lot of people, especially those doing mass edits, don't take the time to look at template descriptions/labels. Grumpylawnchair (talk) 22:09, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Summary

No proposal except an inline tag template was supported by others. People were opposed to both machine-translating titles and flagging of those by bots.

{{Not English inline}} → ^{[needs translation]}

We seem to already have {{Not English inline}} (redirect: {{Needs translation}}), which we can use until someone wants to create a separate one corresponding more to {{Rough translation}}. It can be placed at the end of |trans-title= (tested to be WP:COinS-safe) to specifically refer to it and not the prose. 216.58.25.209 (talk) 04:38, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Second last and first name

I would like to know why the first two templates have two last and first name parts to them. It should just have 1 last and first name part and it having both doesn’t really seem necessary. ErickTheMerrick (talk) 15:35, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I guess you are referring to the first example in the "Authors" section. We could have the first example only have one author to make it a little easier to understand. But in an actual article, the editor will need to cite the names of all the authors, unless the list of authors is overly long. So editors will have to learn to do this early in their editing careers. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:51, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I know, it’s more a convenience thing I guess. I know that some journals will have multiple authors, but the majority of them only need to cite one author and having two be there is kind of annoying to have to delete the “last2=, first2=” and the 1 and 2 from the “last1=, first2=”. It’s nots too big a problem, just wanted to bring it up. ErickTheMerrick (talk) 18:12, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I am talking about the cite journals page btw. ErickTheMerrick (talk) 18:14, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

The easiest way to cite a journal is to write {{cite journal |doi=<DOI>}} (or {{cite journal |jstor=<JSTOR>}}, etc) and get citation bot to expand it for you. It'll take care of 99%+ of all that stuff. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:02, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Sounds like it would be useful though. ErickTheMerrick (talk) 00:23, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Simply, get the article's DOI (or some other identifier), like doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(18)30281-1, then you just write <ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1016/S0262-4079(18)30281-1}}</ref>, and when you click on ✔ Citations, it will automatically expand it to <ref>{{cite journal |last1=Aron |first1=Jacob |year=2018 |title=Deflector Selector says nuke asteroids |journal=New Scientist |volume=237 |issue=3165 |pages=6 |bibcode=2018NewSc.237....6A |doi=10.1016/S0262-4079(18)30281-1}}</ref> Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:37, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Citing explanatory notes within a book

I am wondering, if I want to cite (for example) an explanatory note added by Mr X to a book written by (say) Charles Dickens, how should this be cited using the template? It doesn't feel like putting Dickens as the editor would be correct per se. McPhail (talk) 20:56, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

{{cite |contributor-last=X |contributor-first= |contribution=Title of X's whatever |last=Dickens |first=Charles |title=Title of Dickens' book}}

X, "Title of X's whatever", Title of Dickens' book, by Dickens, Charles,

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:30, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

It works for {{cite book}} too, I just tried it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:59, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, that is great. McPhail (talk) 07:55, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Initials in Vancouver style authors?

Greetings and felicitations. I take it from my edit of tungsten that more than two consecutive initials in Vancouver formatted authors is currently not permitted? (The author in question lists three (two middle ones).) —DocWatson42 (talk) 00:11, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

See the definitive documentation for Vancouver style author (and other) names. cs1|2 does not want you to terminate the |vauthors= namelist with a dot. Terminal punctuation is dependant on cs1 or cs2 style so the cs1|2 template will apply the appropriate terminator.

Interestingly, PMC and PMID example cites often ignore the two-initial rule. Don't know why they can't be bothered to follow their own rules.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:31, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Okay. I thought it was the template, not the style. —DocWatson42 (talk) 00:41, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk:, do we keep track of double bracketed authors in |vauthors=((Author))? A lost of people are just bypassing the error instead of fixing it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:33, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

We do not. Here are some quick and dirty searches for |vauthors= and |veditors= with accept-as-written markup:

• ~2800 articles use |vauthors= that have accept-as-written markup
• ~85 articles use |veditors= that have accept-as-written markup
• ~570 articles use |vauthors= where three or more uppercase letters preceding the accept-as-written markup closing ))
• ~20 articles use |veditors= where three or more uppercase letters preceding the accept-as-written markup closing ))

So, I guess the question is: should we track these? If we are to track accept-as-written markup in the Vancouver-style name-list parameters, which of the above should we track? Any using accept-as-written markup? Any where three or more uppercase letters precede the closing accept-as-written markup? Some other that I haven't thought of?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:38, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Tracking all cases would be good, IMO. Then as we work through them, maybe the logic could be refined. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:04, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

In the sandbox:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |vauthors=((Green ABC))}}

Green ABC. Title.

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000004B-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFGreen_ABC" class="citation book cs1 cs1-prop-vanc-accept">Green ABC. ''Title''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.au=Green+ABC&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fwiki.riteme.site%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span>

{{cite book/new |title=Title |veditors=((Green ABC))}}

Green ABC (ed.). Title.

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000004F-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFGreen_ABC" class="citation book cs1 cs1-prop-vanc-accept">Green ABC (ed.). ''Title''.</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fwiki.riteme.site%3AHelp+talk%3ACitation+Style+1" class="Z3988"></span>

Use of accept-as-written markup in |vauthors= and |veditors= will be tracked in Category:CS1:Vancouver names with accept markup; a properties category. When live, templates using the accept-as-written markup in Vancouver name-list parameters will have the class= attribute cs1-prop-vanc-accept in the <cite> tag. These templates can be highlighted using personal css; see Help:CS1 errors § Properties category highlighting.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:02, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

((value))

Hi, how do I use this to 'use as written'? Many thanks in advance. Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi 13:11, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Any additional context? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:51, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

The template {{cite news}} throws up a CS1 maint: numeric names error when the |title= parameter contains numbers as well as letters. According to this page, the error report can be suppressed using ((value)). But how, exactly, it doesn't say... Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi 15:28, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

That maintnance message (not an error message) does not come from |title=. I presume that you mean |author= or a related parameter. Real live examples with links to articles where you are experiencing problems are always helpful.

First check the name. Names with digits are comparatively rare. Is the name really supposed to have digits in it? If the name is not supposed to have digits, replace it with the appropriate name. If the name really is supposed to have digits then write:

|author=((<name with digits>)).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:48, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Trappist, that's extremely helpful, many thanks! Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi 16:40, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

As Trappist the monk pointed out, authors with digits are rare. In your case:

• {{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/leadership/review.shtml|title=The 1997 Conservative Leadership Contest|last=((BBC Politics 97))|publisher=BBC|date=1997|access-date=26 March 2025}}
  • BBC Politics 97 (1997). "The 1997 Conservative Leadership Contest". BBC. Retrieved 26 March 2025.

I think the following would be more appropriate:

• {{cite web|author=Anon.|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/leadership/review.shtml|title=The 1997 Conservative Leadership Contest|website=Politics 97|publisher=BBC|date=1997|access-date=26 March 2025}}
  • Anon. (1997). "The 1997 Conservative Leadership Contest". Politics 97. BBC. Retrieved 26 March 2025.

-- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:04, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I more-or-less agree except for the |author=Anon. bit. Anon. is nowhere credited in the source as the author so we should not be inventing such a credit.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:56, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

A work without a credited author is by Anon., no? Avoiding |author=Anon. requires a clumsy construct with {{harvid}} which will lead to an unclear chain of shortened footnotes:

References

• {{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/leadership/review.shtml|title=The 1997 Conservative Leadership Contest|website=Politics 97|ref={{harvid|Politics 97}}|publisher=BBC|date=1997|access-date=26 March 2025}}
  • "The 1997 Conservative Leadership Contest". Politics 97. BBC. 1997. Retrieved 26 March 2025.

-- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:05, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

What if a book is in multiple languages?

1101 (talk) 07:05, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

You can comma-separate a list of languages, see Template:Cite book/doc. Thincat (talk) 08:21, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Note that if the book is a collection of separately-authored chapters, you'll probably be citing a chapter rather than the book. Kanguole 10:15, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: add doi=, pmc=, and pmid= parameters to Template:Cite bioRxiv and other templates for preprint repositories

Since 2023, the National Library of Medicine has been indexing preprints on bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, and Research Square that receive NIH funding on PubMed and PMC and is assigning a DOI to them that is the same as the preprint ID.[2] An example of this is this paper. Note that since it is on PMC, there is a free full version of the text on PMC, so maybe including pmc= should make title= link to the PMC page like the cite journal template does. For doi=, maybe make it so that either bioRxiv=/etc. or doi= can be used, but not both, since they link to the same page. The DOI/bioRxiv/etc., PMCID, and PMID should display in the same order as what the cite journal template displays. I have used the preprint I linked on the article "1993 Four Corners hantavirus outbreak" (it is ref 17) but the citation is incomplete given the current restrictions, so I think it would be good to fix this. Velayinosu (talk) 01:09, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

URL status language change request

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) § URL status language change request

 – Sdkb ^talk 03:13, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Affiliation?

It is common for textbooks to be published under the auspices of a university but printed by an external publisher.An example is a textbook written at the Department of Mathematics, Harvard University but published by Jones and Bartlett. The obvious parameter, |institution=Department of Mathematics, [[Harvard University]] won't work because |institution= is an alias of |publisher=. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:47, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

That's because "affiliation" is bibliographically irrelevant and is not information that needs to be included. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:57, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

References

module suite update 12–13 April 2025

I propose to update the cs1|2 module suite over the weekend 12–13 April 2025. Here are the changes:

Module:Citation/CS1:

• add module entry points; discussion
• tighten protocol-relative url-in-title test; discussion
• emit error message when isbn present for pre-1965 publication date; discussion
• add maintenance category for |publisher= with location + publisher; discussion
• properties category for |vauthors= and |veditors= that use accept-as-written markup; discussion

Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

• add free doi prefix recognition for

  Advanced Electronic Materials, Learned Publishing

  Natural Language Processing, Natural Language Processing Journal

  Documenta Mathematica, EMS Magazine, Algebraic Geometry

• emit error message when isbn present for pre-1965 pub date
• add maintenance category for |publisher= with location + publisher
• properties category for |vauthors= and |veditors= that use accept-as-written markup

Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers:

• emit error message when isbn present for pre-1965 pub date

Module:Citation/CS1/COinS:

• strip html markup from |pages=; discussion

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:15, 6 April 2025 (UTC)