How to cite a Wikipedia article

Wikipedia has always had a reputation for being unreliable as a source because anyone can edit it, but it’s actually more credible than you think. This is because every statement on Wikipedia has to be backed up with a source.

Whether you are allowed to use Wikipedia in your paper is up to your teacher or tutor, but if you are allowed to use it then you need to cite it correctly. There are many different ways to cite a Wikipedia article, all depending on the citation style you need to format it in.

The easy way to cite a Wikipedia article

The easiest way is to use our citation generator below. Simply select the style you need to format your citation in, then paste the URL for the Wikipedia article into the search box and press search. We’ll find the details automatically and format them in the style you selected. Then you can copy the generated citation into your paper.

The manual way to cite a Wikipedia article

Alternatively you can cite a Wikipedia article by hand. A Wikipedia article is essentially just a webpage, so you would cite it in the same way you would cite a webpage. For the 3 most popular styles–APA, MLA, and Harvard–this is as follows:

In APA style

You need to locate these details for the article: article title, published date, access date, article URL (web address). The article title can be found at the top of the article, and the publish date can be found right at the bottom looking something like This page was last edited on 13 July 2018, at 00:02 (UTC). The access date is the date you took information from the article (usually today’s date).

Then use this template, replacing the colored placeholders with the information you found on the page:

Wikipedia Contributors. (Published year, Published month and day). Article title. Retrieved Accessed month and day, Accessed year, from Article URL.

The final formatted citation should look like this:

In MLA 8 style

You need to locate these details for the article: article title, published date, accessed date, article URL (web address). The article title can be found at the top of the article, and the publish date can be found right at the bottom looking something like This page was last edited on 13 July 2018, at 00:02 (UTC).. The accessed date is the date you took information from the article (usually today).

Then use this template:

Wikipedia Contributors. “Article title.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Published date day, month, year, Article URL. Accessed Accessed date day, month, year.

The final formatted citation should look like this:

In Harvard style

You need to locate these details for the article: article title, published date, accessed date, article URL (web address). The article title can be found at the top of the article, and the publish date can be found right at the bottom looking something like This page was last edited on 13 July 2018, at 00:02 (UTC).. The accessed date is the date you took information from the article (usually today).

Then use this template:

Wikipedia Contributors (Published date year). Article title. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: Article URL [Accessed Accessed date day, month, year].

The final formatted reference should look like this: