Citations and bibliography

Citing your sources

Academic writing must say where facts came from. LaTeX makes this tidy.
You keep a list of sources, each with a key, and cite the key in your text.

$cite prints a numbered mark and the full entry appears in the references$

The bibliography

List your sources in a thebibliography environment, each as a \bibitem:

\begin{thebibliography}{9}
  \bibitem{lamport} Leslie Lamport. \emph{LaTeX}. 1986.
\end{thebibliography}

The {9} just says "numbers are one digit wide". lamport is the key you choose.

Citing in the text

Anywhere in the document, write \cite{lamport}:

LaTeX is powerful~\cite{lamport}.

LaTeX prints [1] and keeps the numbers in order. Add a source and everything renumbers.

Common mistakes

\cite{key} needs that key defined in your bibliography.
Compile twice, or the citations show as ?.

Cite the book in the sentence with \cite{lamport}, and add a matching \bibitem{lamport} entry inside the bibliography. The same key links the two.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
LaTeX is described in a famous book.

\begin{thebibliography}{9}
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}

Click Run to compile and preview the PDF.

Add a second source. Give the second book a \bibitem{knuth} entry, then cite it in the sentence with \cite{knuth}. Watch LaTeX number them in citation order.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Knuth designed the TeX system that LaTeX is built on.

\begin{thebibliography}{9}
  \bibitem{lamport} Leslie Lamport. \emph{LaTeX}. 1986.
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}