At this edit (spelling error subsequently corrected at this edit) Editor Anupam added this {{cite book}} template:
{{cite book |last1=Garvin |first1=James Louis |last2=Hooper |first2=Franklin Henry |last3=Cox |first3=Warren E. |title=The Encyclopedia Britannica |date=1929 |publisher=, Limited |location=Encyclopedia Britannica Company |page=753 |language=en |quote=The cross in one form or other appears on the flags and ensigns of many Christian countries. The English cross of St. George is a plain red cross on white ground; the Scottish cross of St. Andrew is a plain diagonal white cross (heraldically termed a saltire) on a blue ground, and the Irish cross of St. Patrick is a plain diagonal red cross on a white ground. These three crosses are combined in the Union Jack.}}
I reverted those edits because the result is a malformed reference:
- Garvin, James Louis; Hooper, Franklin Henry; Cox, Warren E. (1929). The Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Company: , Limited. p. 753.
The cross in one form or other appears on the flags and ensigns of many Christian countries. The English cross of St. George is a plain red cross on white ground; the Scottish cross of St. Andrew is a plain diagonal white cross (heraldically termed a saltire) on a blue ground, and the Irish cross of St. Patrick is a plain diagonal red cross on a white ground. These three crosses are combined in the Union Jack.
Here's what's wrong:
|publisher=, Limited – |publisher= holds the name of the book's publisher. , Limited is not the name of a publisher; see the template documentation|location=Encyclopedia Britannica Company – |location= (an alias of |publication-place=) holds the geographical location (typically city) of the publisher; see the template documentation- According to our article about Encyclopædia Britannica, the 14th edition (missing from the above citation) published first in 1929 has 25 volumes. The above citation does not state which of the 25 volumes supports our article's text.
- Encyclopædia Britannica is a collection of articles, sometimes lengthy, sometimes not much more than a paragraph or two. Each article has a title; no article title is given in the above citation.
- James Louis Garvin and Franklin Henry Hooper are the encyclopedia's editors; they are not the author of whatever article is being cited.
I'm not going to edit war. Editor Anupam, per WP:BOLD, was bold, was reverted, should have started this discussion, but instead reverted my edit with the dubious claim: rv - citation is formatted correctly
. Editor Anupam should fix the citation or self revert.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:12, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- Hello, User:Trappist the monk, I see it now. I have fixed the reference parameters in the article. I hope this helps. With regards, AnupamTalk 01:44, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- @Editor Anupam: Well, sort of. If I go to archive.org and look up Encyclopædia Britannica there, I can find the 14th edition volume 14. If I then go to page 753 I find that the article is "Mamalia" written by an author W.K.G. (William King Gregory – see page xvi). Also on that page, it shows that Warren E Cox (W. E. Cx.) is a contributor to the "Lighting and Artificial Illumination" article (pp. 105–115).
- Garvin and Hooper are still listed as authors, not editors; there is no article title;
{{cite book}} has a |volume= parameter – , Volume 14 does not belong in |title=.
- A search for "The cross in one form or other appears on the flags and ensigns of many Christian countries" in volume 14 produced no results. Given the information available in the citation, I still can't find the source that you are citing. Please fix or remove your citation.
- User:Trappist the monk, this is the link to the reference. It is the 14th edition, Volume 6. The reference has been adjusted accordingly. I hope ths helps. Thanks, AnupamTalk 02:45, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- That's a Google books link. Do you have one with access to the text? The reference is still wrong on several points but I can't fix it for you without seeing what it says, and I can't find volume 6 of the 1929 edition on archive.org. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:19, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- The Internet Archive does have it here, s.v. Cross: “Heraldic Crosses”.—Odysseus1479 10:14, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- @Editor Anupam: Still not a good citation. Here's what's still wrong:
- James Louis Garvin and Franklin Henry Hooper are the encyclopedia's editors; they are not the authors of the cited article.
- the title of the cited article ("Cross") is still missing
- the "Cross" article is not signed. What made you think that Warren E. Cox was the author?
- missing the edition
- the volume number does not belong in
|title= but rather belongs in |volume=
- adding the url to the internet archive (preferred) or even the googlebooks facsimiles as a convenience for our readers would not go amiss
- Please attend to each of the items listed here.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:40, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- User:Trappist the monk, the reference is good, and better formated than the majority of those in the article. However, I have attended to your requests. AnupamTalk 15:07, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
- @Editor Anupam: It is better but:
- still no article title
- edition has its own parameter so concatenating
, Fourteenth Edition onto the end of |title= is wrong just as concatenating , Volume 6 onto the end of |title= was wrong.
- I haven't been, but if you are going to compare this citation to all of the other
{{cite book}} citations in the article then you should be using |editor-firstn= and |editor-lastn=. If our goal here is to improve the encyclopedia, you will never be wrong when you write the best formatted citation in an article. But, no points for you when you write a mediocre (or worse) citation that you leave for someone else to fix. Please, attend to these last two items and do better in future.
- Were it me, I would have written the citation this way:
{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last1=Garvin |editor-first1=James Louis |editor-last2=Hooper |editor-first2=Franklin Henry |date=1929 |title=Cross §Heraldic Crosses |encyclopedia=[[The Encyclopædia Britannica]] |publisher=The Encyclopedia Britannica Company |location=London |edition=14th |volume=6 |page=753 |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.59227/page/n807/mode/2up |language=en}}
- Garvin, James Louis; Hooper, Franklin Henry, eds. (1929). "Cross §Heraldic Crosses". The Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (14th ed.). London: The Encyclopedia Britannica Company. p. 753.
- Yes, I left out the quote because the source is free-to-read and this point in our article is not likely to be controversial. Of course, that begs the question: do we really need a citation about the three crosses? But, I'm done with this conversation; someone else can argue that question (or not).
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:30, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
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