I can't be the only one to appreciate the English Wikipedia's citation style 1 (WP:CS1).TLDR:>author-date-title>free as in freedom>versatile>makes syntactic sense>consistentFirst, there's the obvious author-date-title order, which is perfect for navigation. If you want short citations (WP:SFN) in running text like "Doe (2025)", (<< logical quotations btw) then all you have to do is list the refs alphabetically, then chronologically. Sure, SFN is not everyone's cup of tea. By design, CS1 allows a lot of leeway in terms of usage. This means you can easily cramp your refs in an enumerated list. Also, you are free to use initials or write out the given name, and to use any date format of your liking. While mainstream citation styles normally issue entire pamphlets, the entire CS1 docs is contained in a single article. It's quite axiomatic if I do say so myself. Also, fun fact, somebody made [[TM:Cite bathroom graffiti]]. This goes to show how incredibly versatile CS1 can be. Due to its Wikitext nature, CS1 is syntactically consistent. If you want to learn CS1 by heart, you can rest assured that surname-givenname will remain the same throughout. Gee, imagine having to memorize that the editors' given name comes first because some corpo tells you to. CS1 also follows the common prose style where minor works are written in quotations and major works are in italics. CS1 is the effort of over 2 decades' community-driven consensus. No other citation style can come close to CS1's value. Academic publishers should at least experiment with CS1 on some long forgotten journal.>t. Anonymous (2025-12-15). "CS1 appreciation post" - via 4chan.
