Template:Citation Style documentation/url

• url: URL of an online location where the text of the publication can be found. Cannot be used if title is wikilinked. If applicable, the link may point to the specific page(s) referenced. Remove spurious tracking parameters from URLs, e.g. #ixzz2rBr3aO94 or ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=...&utm_term=...&utm_campaign=.... Do not link to any commercial booksellers, such as Amazon.com. See: WP:PAGELINKS.
  • access-date: Full date when the contents pointed to by url was last verified to support the text in the article; do not wikilink; requires url; use the same format as other access and archive dates in the citations. Not required for linked documents that do not change. For example, access-date is not required for links to copies of published research papers accessed via DOI or a published book, but is required for links to news articles on commercial sites (these are changed from time to time, even if also published in a physical media). Note that access-date is the date that the URL was checked to not only be working, but to support the assertion being cited (which the current version of the page may not do). Can be hidden or styled by registered editors. Alias: accessdate.
  • archive-url: The URL of an archived copy of a web page, if or in case the url becomes unavailable. Typically used to refer to services like WebCite (see: Wikipedia:Using WebCite) and Internet Archive (see: Wikipedia:Using the Wayback Machine); requires archive-date and url. Alias: archiveurl.
    • archive-date: Date when the original URL was archived; preceded by default text "archived from the original on". Use the same format as other access and archive dates in the citations. This does not necessarily have to be the same format that was used for citing publication dates. Do not wikilink. Alias: archivedate.
    • dead-url: When the URL is still live, but pre-emptively archived, then set |dead-url=no. This changes the display order with the title retaining the original link and the archive linked at the end. Alias: deadurl.
  • template-doc-demo: The archive parameters will be error checked to ensure that all the required parameters are included, or else {{citation error}} is invoked. With errors, main, help and template pages are placed into Category:Articles with incorrect citation syntax. Set |template-doc-demo=true to disable categorization; mainly used for documentation where the error is demonstrated.
• format: Format of the work referred to by url; for example: PDF, DOC, or XLS; displayed in parentheses after title. HTML is implied and should not be specified. Does not change the external link icon. Note: External link icons do not include alt text; thus, they do not add format information for the visually impaired.

URLs must begin with a supported URI scheme. http:// and https:// will be supported by all browsers; however, ftp://, gopher://, irc://, ircs://, mailto: and news: will require a plug-in or an external application and should normally be avoided. IPv6 host-names are currently not supported.

If URLs in citation template parameters contain certain characters, then they will not display and link correctly. Those characters need to be percent-encoded. For example, a space must be replaced by %20. To encode the URL, replace the following characters with:

sp	"	'	<	>	[	]	{	|	}
%20	%22	%27	%3c	%3e	%5b	%5d	%7b	%7c	%7d

Single apostrophes do not need to be encoded; however, unencoded multiples will be parsed as italic or bold markup. Single curly closing braces also do not need to be encoded; however, an unencoded pair will be parsed as the double closing braces for the template transclusion.