References can take on many forms, including: a thought, a sensory perception that is audible (onomatopoeia), visual (text), olfactory, or tactile, emotional state, relationship with other,[1] spacetime coordinates, symbolic or alpha-numeric, a physical object, or an energy projection. In some cases, methods are used that intentionally hide the reference from some observers, as in cryptography.[citation needed]
References feature in many spheres of human activity and knowledge, and the term adopts shades of meaning particular to the contexts in which it is used. Some of them are described in the sections below.
The verb refer (to) and its derivatives may carry the sense of "connect to" or "link to", as in the meanings of reference described in this article. Another sense is "consult"; this is reflected in such expressions as reference work, reference desk, job reference, etc.
In semantics, reference is generally construed as the relationships between nouns or pronouns and objects that are named by them. Hence, the word "John" refers to the person John. The word "it" refers to some previously specified object. The object referred to is called the referent of the word.[3] Sometimes the word-object relation is called "denotation"; the word denotes the object. The converse relation, the relation from object to word, is called "exemplification"; the object exemplifies what the word denotes. In syntactic analysis, if a word refers to a previous word, the previous word is called the "antecedent".
Gottlob Frege argued that reference cannot be treated as identical with meaning: "Hesperus" (an ancient Greek name for the evening star) and "Phosphorus" (an ancient Greek name for the morning star) both refer to Venus, but the astronomical fact that '"Hesperus" is "Phosphorus"' can still be informative, even if the "meanings" of "Hesperus" and "Phosphorus" are already known. This problem led Frege to distinguish between the sense and reference of a word.[citation needed]
The very concept of the linguistic sign is the combination of content and expression, the former of which may refer entities in the world or refer more abstract concepts, e.g. thought.Certain parts of speech exist only to express reference, namely anaphora such as pronouns. The subset of reflexives expresses co-reference of two participants in a sentence. These could be the agent (actor) and patient (acted on), as in "The man washed himself", the theme and recipient, as in "I showed Mary to herself", or various other possible combinations.
In computer science, references are data types that refer to an object elsewhere in memory and are used to construct a wide variety of data structures, such as linked lists. Generally, a reference is a value that enables a program to directly access the particular data item. Most programming languages support some form of reference. For the specific type of reference used in the C++ language, see reference (C++).
References to many types of printed matter may come in an electronic or machine-readable form. For books, there exists the ISBN and for journal articles, the Digital object identifier (DOI) is gaining relevance. Information on the Internet may be referred to by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
In terms of mental processing, a self-reference is used in psychology to establish identification with a mental state during self-analysis. This seeks to allow the individual to develop own frames of reference in a greater state of immediate awareness. However, it can also lead to circular reasoning, preventing evolution of thought.[4]
According to Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), a reference condition is the state toward which a control system's output tends to alter a controlled quantity. The main proposition is that "All behavior is oriented all of the time around the control of certain quantities with respect to specific reference conditions."[5]
In academics and scholarship, a reference or bibliographical reference is a piece of information provided in a footnote or bibliography of a written work such as a book, article, essay, report, oration or any other text type, specifying the written work of another person used in the creation of that text. A bibliographical reference mostly includes the full name of the author, the title of their work and the year of publication. The primary purpose of references is to allow readers to examine the sources of a text, either for validity or to learn more about the subject. Such items are often listed at the end of a work in a section marked References or Bibliography.
References are particularly important as for the use of citations, since copying of material by another author without proper reference and / or without required permissions is considered plagiarism, and may be tantamount to copyright infringement, which can be subject to legal proceedings. A reference section contains only those works indeed cited in the main text of a work. In contrast, a bibliographical section often contains works not cited by the author, but used as background reading or listed as potentially useful to the reader.
Keeping a diary allows an individual to use references for personal organization, whether or not anyone else understands the systems of reference used. However, scholars have studied methods of reference because of their key role in communication and co-operation between different people, and also because of misunderstandings that can arise. Modern academic study of bibliographical references has been developing since the 19th century.[6] [7]
In patent law, a reference is a document that can be used to show the state of knowledge at a given time and that therefore may make a claimed invention obvious or anticipated. Examples of references are patents of any country, magazine articles, Ph.D. theses that are indexed and thus accessible to those interested in finding information about the subject matter, and to some extent Internet material that is similarly accessible.
A citation or reference in an article usually has two parts. In the first part, each section of text that is either based on, or quoted from, an outside source is marked as such with an inline citation. This is usually displayed as a superscript footnote number: [1] The second necessary part of the citation or reference is the list of full references, which provides complete, formatted detail about the source, so that anyone reading the article can find it and verify it.
This page explains how to place and format both parts of the citation. Each article should use one citation method or style throughout. If an article already has citations, preserve consistency by using that method or seek consensus on the talk page before changing it .mw-parser-output div.crossreferencepadding-left:0(the principle is reviewed at Variation in citation methods). While you should try to write citations correctly, what matters most is that you provide enough information to identify the source. Others will improve the formatting if needed. See: "Help:Referencing for beginners", for a brief introduction on how to put references in Wikipedia articles; and cite templates in Visual Editor, about a graphical way for citation, included in Wikipedia.
Forms of short citations used include author-date referencing (APA style, Harvard style, or Chicago style), and author-title or author-page referencing (MLA style or Chicago style). As before, the list of footnotes is automatically generated in a "Notes" or "Footnotes" section, which immediately precedes the "References" section containing the full citations to the source. Short citations can be written manually, or by using either the sfn or harvnb templates or the r referencing template. (Note that templates should not be added without consensus to an article that already uses a consistent referencing style.) The short citations and full citations may be linked so that the reader can click on the short note to find full information about the source. See the template documentation for details and solutions to common problems. For variations with and without templates, see wikilinks to full references. For a set of realistic examples, see these.
When using manual links it is easy to introduce errors such as duplicate anchors and unused references. The script User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors will show many related errors. Duplicate anchors may be found by using the W3C Markup Validation Service.
In particular, sources are needed for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. If reliable sources cannot be found for challenged material, it is likely to be removed from the article. Sources are also required when quoting someone, with or without quotation marks, or closely paraphrasing a source. But the need to cite sources is not limited to those situations: editors are always encouraged to add or improve citations for any information in an article.
Citations are especially desirable for statements about living persons, particularly when the statements are contentious or potentially defamatory. In accordance with the biography of living persons policy, unsourced information of this type is likely to be removed on sight.
For an image or other media file, details of its origin and copyright status should appear on its file page. Image captions should be referenced as appropriate just like any other part of the article. A citation is not needed for descriptions such as alt text that are verifiable directly from the image itself, or for text that merely identifies a source (e.g., the caption "Belshazzar's Feast (1635)" for File:Rembrandt-Belsazar.jpg).
Citations are not used on disambiguation pages (sourcing for the information given there should be done in the target articles). Citations are often omitted from the lead section of an article, insofar as the lead summarizes information for which sources are given later in the article, although quotations and controversial statements, particularly if about living persons, should be supported by citations even in the lead. See WP:LEADCITE for more information.
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