Template:Author missing/doc

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).

Usage
This template should never be substituted.


 * With references in a Cite-type template (Cite web, Cite book, Citation, etc.):
 * author
 * or
 * last


 * 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 &#91;author incomplete&#93; using:
 * first
 * or
 * author


 * With a free-form reference citation, just append the tag to the end of the citation:

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&#58;:
 * FamilynameGiven Name(s)
 * or, for multiple authors:
 * FamilynameGiven Name(s)Coauthor name(s), formatted as needed for the citation style being used
 * or for a committee, working group, etc., instead of individual author names:
 * Organizational author
 * For a free-form citation&#58;:
 * Just add the name(s) as appropriate to the format of the citation; or...
 * Better yet, convert the entire citation to Cite journal, Cite news or some other Cite-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:
 * &lt;!--none--&gt;
 * or for free-form citations:
 * 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 none unless you are using Cite book or another template that recognizes the value  and hides the output instead of displaying the word "none". Most of the Cite/Citation-style templates do not do this (as of January 2010), but certainly should.
 * Do not use unknown, 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.
 * Do not use unknown, 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.
 * 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-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.