Someone asked, how do I use the templates for cite book, cite web etc? What does its columns mean?

Let us look at a template cite book in this post.

Typically, I store a shortened blank template for {{cite book}} which is:

<ref name="">{{cite book |title= |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |year= |publisher= |location= |isbn= |page= |pages= |url= |accessdate=9 January 2012}}</ref>

Its really simple, just fill in the blanks. For example -

title (title of the book) = The Last Days of the Mahatma
last (last name of author) = Desai
first (first name of author) = Hirenbhai
authorlink (if the author has a Wikipedia article on him, this is the name of that article, leave blank if none) =
coauthors (names of additional authors, only if any) = Kulkarni, Srikanth & Karlekar, H. B.
year (year of publication) = 2001
publisher (name of publisher) = Nawajiwan Press
location (which city is publisher located in) = Ahmedabad
isbn (International Standard Book Number, earlier in 9 digits, now in thirteen digits, IMPORTANT, specify only one isbn in the template, doesn't matter whether 9-digit or 13-digit) = 0-941990-93-9
page (give the page number; only use if the page referred was just one page) = 324
pages (give the page numbers; only use if the page(s) referred to were more than one page ) = 324-327
(IMPORTANT - Use "page" or "pages" but not both.)
url (uniform resource locator, i.e. your web address in layman's terms) - http://books.google.com/books?id=ESgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA60
accessdate=The day you accessed it on the web

Ah yes,

ref name=some phrase you think off to link your common list-defined references.

Hope this helps,

Warm regards,

Ashwin Baindur
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