Editing Help:Citation Style 1 (section)

===Authors===
An author may be cited using separate parameters for the author's surname and given name by using {{para|last}} and {{para|first}} respectively. If a cited source has multiple authors, subsequent authors can be listed in the citation using {{para|last2}} and {{para|first2}}, {{para|last3}} and {{para|first3}}, etc.<ref group="Note" name="NB_Unlimited">The number of authors that can be listed in the citation and displayed when published is unlimited.</ref> For symmetry with the other numbered parameters, {{para|last1}} and {{para|first1}} are available as well, as shown in the following example:

:<code><nowiki>{{cite book |last1=Hawking |first1=Stephen |last2=Hawking |first2=Lucy |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe}}</nowiki></code>

:{{cite book |last1=Hawking |first1=Stephen |last2=Hawking |first2=Lucy |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe}}

For symmetry with similar parameters for editors and other contributors (discussed further below), longer parameter forms are also available for authors: {{para|author-last}} and {{para|author-first}}, as well as numbered variants like {{para|author-last{{var|n}}}} and {{para|author-first{{var|n}}}} or {{para|author{{var|n}}-last}} and {{para|author{{var|n}}-first}} (with {{var|n}} referring to this author's number in the list). Because the shorthand parameters might erroneously have been used also for editors and other types of contributors by some Wikipedians in the past, please make sure that the parameters actually refer to authors when expanding {{para|last}} and {{para|first}} parameters to their longer equivalents (equivalent parameters for editors etc. exist as well, see [[#Editors|below]]).

If a cited source has a large number of authors, one can limit the number of authors displayed when the citation is published by using the {{para|display-authors}} parameter as described in detail in the [[Help:Citation Style 1#Display options|Display options]] section of this help page.

If a cited author is notable and the author has a Wikipedia article, the author's name can be linked with {{para|author-link}}.<ref group="Note" name="NB_Prefix">If the English Wikipedia does not have an article about the author, but an article is available in another language entity of Wikipedia or if a [[Wikidata]] node for this author exists already, you can prefix the link using that Wikipedia's [[Help:Interlanguage links|language prefix]] (similar to <code>:en:</code> for the English Wikipedia) in order to create an [[Help:Interlanguage links|interwiki link]]. The [[Help:Interwiki linking#Prefix codes for linking to Wikimedia sister projects|prefix]] for Wikidata nodes is <code>:d:</code> (or <code>:wikidata:</code>) to be followed by the Q''&lt;id>'' number of the corresponding entry. (<!-- Put in brackets because this seldomly applies to authors: -->Similar, [[Wikisource]] uses <code>:s:</code> (or <code>:wikisource:</code>), [[Wiktionary]] <code>:wikt:</code> (or <code>:wiktionary:</code>) and [[Wikimedia Commons|Commons]] <code>:c:</code> (or <code>:commons:</code>), followed by the corresponding article name.) Alternatively, if a suitable [[:m:Interwiki map|custom interwiki prefix]] is defined for another authority control repository, this can be used as well. For example, to link to an author's [[VIAF]] entry (with code <code>''&lt;id>''</code>), <code>:VIAF:''&lt;id>''</code> can be used, even if this would resolve to an independent external site. In the absence of a local article such links can help to at least establish a connection to a particular author and, if an article gets created in the English Wikipedia as well in the future, these links can be fixed up by bots to point to the local article instead.</ref> If a citation includes multiple notable authors, one may use {{para|author-link{{var|n}}}} or {{para|author{{var|n}}-link}}, etc. This method is used because the {{para|last}}- and {{para|first}}-type parameters do not allow wikilinking. However, {{para|author-link}} cannot be used to link to an external website; the external link will not render correctly.<ref group="Note" name="NB_Prefix"/> Below is an example of a wikilinked author credit:

:<code><nowiki>{{cite book |author-last1=Hawking |author-first1=Stephen |author-link1=Stephen Hawking |author-last2=Hawking |author-first2=Lucy |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe}}</nowiki></code>

:{{cite book |author-last1=Hawking |author-first1=Stephen |author-link1=Stephen Hawking |author-last2=Hawking |author-first2=Lucy |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe}}

When an author is cited, the date of the cited work is displayed after the author's name, as shown in the example below:

:<code><nowiki>{{cite book |author-last1=Hawking |author-first1=Stephen |author-link1=Stephen Hawking |author-last2=Hawking |author-first2=Lucy |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe |date=2007}}</nowiki></code>

:{{cite book |author-last1=Hawking |author-first1=Stephen |author-link1=Stephen Hawking |author-last2=Hawking |author-first2=Lucy |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe |date=2007}}

If no author is cited, the date appears after the title, as shown in the example below:

:<code><nowiki>{{cite book |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe |date=2007}}</nowiki></code>

:{{cite book |title=George's Secret Key to the Universe |date=2007}}

If the cited source does not credit an author, as is common with newswire reports, press releases or company websites use:

:{{para|author|<nowiki><!--Not stated--></nowiki>}}

This HTML comment alerts fact-checking and citation-fixing editors, and potentially bots, that the cited source did not name an author—the author was not overlooked. Without this entry editors and bots would waste time researching cited sources for a non-existent author credit.

When using {{para|author}} avoid citations like <code><nowiki>{{cite news |work=Weekday Times |author=''Weekday Times'' editors |title=...}}</nowiki></code>, unless the article is on a field in which the majority of professional journals covering that field use such a citation style.

Editors should use an {{para|author}} organizational citation when the cited source, such as a committee report, specifically names an official body or a sub-unit of the publisher as the collective author of the work, e.g. {{para|author|Commission on Headphone Safety}} or {{para|author|Rules Sub-committee}}. Do not use {{para|author}} to assert what you think was probably the collective author when the source itself does not specifically specify a collective author; doing so is [[WP:NOR|original research]] and falsification of [[WP:V|source verifiability]] and [[WP:RS|reliability]].

{{para|author}} should never hold the name of more than one author.  Separate individual authors into enumerated individual {{para|author{{var|n}}}} parameters.