{{Title missing}} (or {{title?}} for short) is an inline cleanup template flagging a broken source citation that is missing the title, or complete and correct title, of the cited material (or at least the specified fact that title information is not available).
It is most commonly used to replace a bad title, when an automated tool or an incautious user has uncritically accepted the value of a <title>...</title>
from a Web page and the value is incorrect; many sites just repeat the name of the site (the work, in citation terms) in this field, and put the title of the actual page only in a <h1>...</h1>
heading or elsewhere in the page's content. Another replacement case is when the information is wrong because an editor copy-pasted one source citation in the wikicode of the article to use it as the basis for another citation to a different source, and adjusted the URL and other information but forgot to change the title.
The template can also be used to tag for cleanup a truncated title or the fact that the title information simply has been omitted entirely. A common case of this is an unformatted citation to an unspecified work (e.g. "Johnson (2001)", without any corresponding further data on the source). This is because an editor just forgot to fill in the details, because someone assumed a source was so well known it did not need complete citation, or because the material was split from an overly long article into a new sub-topical article without ensuring that all citations made the trip with the content.
When the given title is questionable or outright disputed, then a dispute template of some kind, such as {{citation needed}}, {{dubious}}, or {{disputed-inline}}, etc., should be used instead.
For a short citation (e.g. "Smith 2001") that is missing a corresponding full citation, or a citation that is so brief as to be unverifiable (e.g. "Article in The Washington Post"), use {{full citation needed}} instead.
Do not place this template in any Citation Style 1 citation's
|title=
parameter. All text in |title=
the parameter is made part of the citation's COinS metadata. The |title=
parameter should include title data only.
{{Title missing|date=August 2024}}
after the citation, typically just before the closing </ref>
.{{title missing|partial=yes}}
or {{title incomplete}}
Do not remove the template without fixing the problem one of the following ways.
|title=TitleOfCitedItem
{{cite xxx}}
-series template, as appropriate for the work in question.|title=[untitled]
[untitled]
|title=none
, |title=unknown
or anything else vague; any implication other that the source itself did not specify a title is simply a signal to other editors to re-tag it with {{title missing}}.{{cite xxx}}
-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 {{title missing}} as well.The template is an inline cleanup template flagging a broken source citation that is missing the title, or complete and correct title, of the cited material.
Parameter | Description | Type | Status | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Incomplete title | partial | Used if part of the title is present.
| Boolean | optional |
Date | date | Provides the month and year of the citation request.
| Date | suggested |