Template:Primary sources section

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Not to be confused with Template:Primary sources references section.

Usage

{{Primary sources section|date=January 2026}}

Parameters

There are four parameters, all optional:

• |date= : month and year the section was last checked for references; e.g., |date=January 2026
• |talk= : discussion section on the talk page.
• |find= : search keywords for {{find sources}} param 1 (double-quoted search). This optional parameter adds a set of links produced by the {{find sources}} template to the output. If omitted, no "find sources" links are displayed.
• |find2= : search keywords for {{find sources}} param 2 (unquoted search). Alias: unquoted.

Details

Date

As with most cleanup templates, the |date= parameter sorts the article into subcategories of Category:Articles lacking reliable references, allowing the oldest problems to be identified and dealt with first. You do not need to specify the date manually; a bot will add it later automatically.

Find and find2

• Generally follows the usage and values as described at Template:Primary sources#Parameters.
• Suggested usage: |find=Article title and |find2=Section header. This will often yield the best results if the article title is limited to one or two words (e.g., "French Revolution"), or if longer than two words, if it is a set expression unlikely to vary (e.g., "Frankie Goes to Hollywood"). For descriptive titles that are longer than two words, it is often better to limit param |find= to just one or two words, and use the remaining keywords as part of unquoted search in |find2=.
• There is one main difference in usage between this template and {{Primary sources}}: in this template, the default if no parameters are given is |find=none; this is because the normal default at article level is the article title, but that wouldn't yield good results for find sources links in individual sections; the most important words of the section header should be included in the "find" search keywords.
• The combination of |find=none and |find2=any value is invalid.

See also

• {{Primary sources}}
• {{BLP primary sources}}
• {{Primary source inline}}
• {{Only primary sources}}

Template data

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Primary sources section in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Primary sources section

This template alerts people to an article section containing encyclopedic content which appears to rely too much on primary sources.

Template parameters[Edit template data]

This template prefers block formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Month and year	date	As with most cleanup templates, the date= parameter sorts the article into subcategories of Category:Articles lacking reliable references, allowing the oldest problems to be identified and dealt with first. You do not need to specify the date manually; a bot will add it later automatically. Auto value {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}	String	suggested
Talk	talk	Name of talk page section	String	optional
Find	find	Search keywords for 'find sources' double-quoted (exact) search. May be one or more words. Leave empty to suppress 'find sources' output. Example Jane Austen	String	optional
Find2	find2 unquoted	Search keywords for 'find sources' unquoted search. Example early life	String	optional

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