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Law & Order Wiki  AboutPolicies and guidelines → Cite your sources
Las & Order
This page describes one of the Law & Order Wiki's policies and guidelines

Please read through the policy below to familiarize yourself with our common practices and rules.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or complaints, please post them on the talk page.

The Law & Order Wiki doesn't exist in a vacuum. There are a great number of other sources of information out there, many of which are used in writing articles for the Law & Order Wiki. It's always important to cite your sources when you use external works. Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism and may be a copyright violation.

For the sake of consistency, please adhere to the system described through the examples below for any citations you add.


Episodes and films[]

All in-universe information comes from the various Law & Order franchise episodes and films and these should be referenced when writing a Law & Order universe article.

Whenever possible, try to keep the reference at the end of a paragraph. At the end of a body paragraph, the following format is preferred, adding the episode reference parenthesized at the end of the statement it refers to, so as not to break the "perspective" of writing about Law & Order from a character's point of view:

She adjusted phaser banks to emit a power beam. (L&O: "Encounter at Farpoint")

The wiki code is:

She adjusted phaser banks to emit a power beam. ({{L&O}}: "[[Encounter at Farpoint"]])

To cite two or more episodes of the same series:

On two occasions she visited the Enterprise-D. (L&O: "The Emissary", "Reunion")
On two occasions she visited the ''Enterprise''-D. ({{L&O}}: "[[The Emissary]]", "[[Reunion]]")

Use a semicolon to cite two or more episodes of different series:

He worked as a diagnostic engineer, sometimes assigned to projects involving advanced holography. (L&O: "Hollow Pursuits", "Realm of Fear"; SVU: "Projections")
He worked as a diagnostic engineer, sometimes assigned to projects involving advanced holography. ({{L&O}}: "[[Hollow Pursuits]]", "[[Realm of Fear]]"; {{SVU}}: "[[Projections]]")

In "background" sections, however, it is not necessary to parenthesize an entire episode reference if it is part of a statement, occurring within the body of a sentence (every part of the background note is from the same POV). In this case, it could be formatted like this:

The actors both went on to appear in "Conspiracy".
The actors both went on to appear in {{e|Conspiracy}}.

References can also be in a list or at the end of an article in which case the following format is preferred:

  • L&O
  • SVU
  • CI
    • "Caretaker"
    • "Dark Frontier"
    • "Endgame"
*{{L&O|Encounter at Farpoint}}
*{{SVU|Emissary}}
*{{CI}}
**{{e|Caretaker}}
**{{e|Dark Frontier}}
**{{e|Endgame}}

This is recommended especially if a single phrase has more than three or four episode references relevant to it. Note the format of multiple episodes from the same series with the VOY examples.

To cite a film use the {{film}} template; the first parameter is the number of the film: Template:Film

{{film|5}}

A more complex example:

Zefram Cochrane invented warp drive on Earth. (UK; Template:Film)
He later appeared in Star Trek: Enterprise.
[[Zefram Cochrane]] invented [[warp drive]] on [[Earth]]. ({{UK|Metamorphosis}}; {{film|8}})

He later appeared in ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]''.

Please note that, even though American English (L&O Wiki's standard) recommends placing punctuation within quotation marks, episode title links are an exception: commas, semicolons, and periods are outside of the quotes (when used against a linked episode or story name).

Italics should only be used in citations when referring to a movie or series title, not individual episode citations.

See also
  • Linking to episodes and films

Real-world sources[]

Valid information from a "real-world" point of view must also be referenced where it derives from an external source. This is done with an in-text citation immediately following the statement or paragraph.

Books[]

The citation for a book should include a link to the work. When referring to a particular section of the book, it is preferable to provide a page number:

Leonard Nimoy is not Spock. (I Am Not Spock, p. 1)

When citing a specific page, an edition number should also be provided if the book has multiple editions:

The Crazy Horse was named for Chief Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux tribe. (Star Trek Encyclopedia 3rd ed., p. 104)

When referring to multiple pages:

Leonard Nimoy is Spock. (I Am Spock, pp. 10-17)
This statement can be traced to various individual statements in the book. (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, pp. 5, 102)

Alternatively, the title of a book may be mentioned as part of a sentence:

According to the Star Trek Cookbook (p. 22), the thill is a large game bird native to the Dalibardadian Plains of Central Talax in the Delta Quadrant.
The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion (2nd ed., p. 210) states that this episode was a homage to Frankenstein.

Commentaries[]

Audio or text commentaries from DVDs or Blu-ray can be cited in the following manner:

It was intended that Worf would be a descendant of T'Pol. (ENT Season 1 DVD "Broken Bow" audio commentary)

When the item to be cited is on the episode article, the episode name can be omitted.

DVD/Blu-ray special features[]

The citation for a DVD or Blu-ray special feature should include the title of the feature and a link to the DVD or Blu-ray:

"Shuttlepod One" was created as a bottle show. (Inside Shuttlepod One, ENT Season 1 DVD special features)

Scripts[]

If information comes from a script, it is sufficient to state this in the note:

The script for "Journey to Babel" gives a description of Gav's voice, calling it "rough, grating, and accented in some way... as though English is very alien on his tongue."

A link should also be provided if the script is available online:

In the script for "Tapestry", Marta Batanides is described as "a short, pretty woman, and is [...] roughly twenty-one." Template:Star Trek Minutiae

Citing the Law & Order Wiki[]

For suggestions on how to cite the Law & Order Wiki, see Citing the Law & Order Wiki.

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