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? 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?.
 * 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?.


 * 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? as well.