Template:Author incomplete

Template documentation

{{Author missing}} (or {{author?}} for short) is an inline cleanup template flagging a broken source citation that is missing author information (or at least the specified fact that author information is not available).

Use

• For all citations, append the tag to the end of the citation (usually just before the closing reference tag </ref>):

  {{author missing|date=March 2026}}

• In the occasional case of a partial name (e.g. just a family name, or some construction such as "Dr. Falstaff" or "Reagan and Parkes" or "VNEA" without the full information being provided in a "Notes", "References" or "Bibliography" section elsewhere on the page), you can change the displayed text to ^{[author incomplete]} using:

  {{author missing|partial=yes|date=March 2026}}

  or

  {{author incomplete|date=March 2026}}

How to fix the problem flagged by this template

Do not remove the template without fixing the problem one of the following ways.

• If you know the author(s), fill in the needed information, and remove the template.

  For a template-formatted citation, there are three basic ways to do this:

  1. |last=Familyname|first=Given Name(s)

     or, for multiple authors:

  2. |last1=Familyname1 |first1=Given Name1(s) |last2=Familyname2 |first2=Given Name2(s), etc

     or for a committee, working group, etc., instead of individual author names:

  3. |author=Organizational author

  For a free-form citation:

  1. Just add the name(s) as appropriate to the format of the citation; or...
  2. Better yet, convert the entire citation to {{cite journal}}, {{cite news}} or some other {{cite xxx}}-series template, as appropriate for the work in question.

• If you know that no author was specified by the original source, as in common in many newswires, explicitly state this with:
  1. |author=<!--none-->

     or for free-form citations:

  2. <!--No author specified by source.-->

  Do not use question marks.

  Do not just repeat the publisher, work (publication/site) name, or other field.

  Do not leave the information blank and untag it, or someone else will just come along later and flag this with {{author missing}} again! The citation templates know how to properly format a citation to something with no specified author (thus the HTML comment formatting above).

  Do not use |author=none

  Do not use |author=unknown, |author=not sure or anything else vague; any implication other than that the source itself did not specify an author is simply a signal to other editors to re-tag it with {{author missing}}.

• If you don't know:

  Do not use question marks.

  1. Check the source, and add the necessary information, as above.

  If the source is a dead link, check archive.org for a backup copy (see your {{citation}}/{{cite xxx}}-type template's documentation for use of |archiveurl= and |archivedate= parameters). If no archive copy is available, use {{dead link}} after the citation, but leave {{author missing}} as well.

See also

Source citation guidelines

• Wikipedia:Citing sources
• Wikipedia:Reliable sources
• Wikipedia:Verifiability

Citation repair templates

• {{Full citation needed}} – the catch-all
• {{Author missing}}

• {{Author incomplete}} – a variant for partial data

• {{Date missing}}
• {{ISBN missing}}
• {{Place missing}}
• {{Publisher missing}}
• {{Title missing}}

• {{Title incomplete}} – a variant for partial data

• {{Year missing}}

Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Subpages of this template.