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Hi - just noticed your 29 Jan edits to the refs at2025 Belize measles outbreak - looks much more professional, thank you! Quick q if you've got time - is the preference for expanded short citations (a la "Press Office 2025a") over abbreviated ones ("POa") a WP/MOS consensus/guideline/policy, or just personal preference? (Asking bc another editor [atmy talkpage ] kindly pointed out my frequently-used abbreviated short cites were nonstandard and would fail GA criteria, but otherwise seemed MOS compliant, as far as they or I knew. Would appreciate any help as don't wanna create any downstream work for other editors, unless it's totally a personal preference sorta deal :) -Asdfjrjjj (talk)23:20, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

'POa' is cryptic and reader hostile. When I got to that article I did not know what was meant by 'POa'. I could guess that it was one of the three citations attributed to some author called 'PO' (which, it turns out, is not an author at all) but I couldn't guess which of the three was 'POa'. Remember, readers may not have javascript turned on or may be reading a paper copy of the article. There is no limit to space so full names, full dates, full <whatever> is to be preferred.

The template documentation shows the mechanism that I used; seeTemplate:Sfn § No author name in citation template. Yes, I know that the documentation says that use of initials is ok, but please don't, even for initialisms as ubiquitous as 'WHO'; spell it out so that there is no doubt in the reader's mind as to what source you are citing.

—Trappist the monk (talk)23:52, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Sorry to bother you, I came across your username while trying to figure out why my attempt at citing a journal puts the page number after the publisher here:Béla Rákosi. Then I made a simpler one inmy sandbox and it's the same there. Is this a problem on my end only? If not, could you point me in the right direction towards trying to fix it or get it fixed? Thank you!Drake178 (talk)05:52, 13 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Just to note that I've now revised the ref, adding an author and omitting the publisher and location. I assume the presence of the publisher and location are the problem – is that correct?Peter coxhead (talk)11:00, 13 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Long-time known issue. It is relatively uncommon for editors to include|publisher= when citing a periodical (academic or otherwise) so EditorPeter coxhead's version of the citation is quite common.

as an aside, perMOS:JR, no comma before a generational suffix.

—Trappist the monk (talk)14:19, 13 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

In my view, publisher isn't needed with a journal citation, so the template is fine. Perhaps use of these parameters with|journal= should be flagged?

Comma fixed, I'd misrememberedMOS:JR.

Peter coxhead (talk)16:50, 13 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps. If we are to believe thissearch result (times out), there are more than 86,000 articles that have{{cite journal}} with|publisher=. I might take your suggestion toHelp talk:Citation Style 1.

—Trappist the monk (talk)17:13, 13 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly filled by shitty scripts and the visual editor. The vast majority of them could and should be purged.Headbomb {t ·c ·p ·b}19:00, 13 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both! If this is how it's going to stay, wouldn't it be worth mentioning this quirk in the template documentation? Even some of the vertical format copy+pastes have both publisher and pages parameters. I'd imagine the location argument has the same issue as well.Drake178 (talk)20:02, 13 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]