ସହଯୋଗ:Footnotes
This page is a how-to guide detailing a practice or process on the English Wikipedia. |
This page explains how to create the Footnotes section for Wikipedia articles. In this context, the word "Footnotes" refers to the Wikipedia-specific manner of documenting an article's sources and providing tangential information, and should not be confused with the general concept of footnotes. This how-to does not cover the formatting of citations within the Footnotes section, which is reviewed in Citing sources.
Footnotes are used most commonly to provide:
- references (bibliographic citations) to reliable sources,
- explanatory information or
- source information for tables and other elements.
The use of Footnotes is only one of several options for providing source information in the article. Other systems of inline citation, including Shortened footnotes and Parenthetical referencing, may be used at the editor's discretion in accordance with the guideline on Variation in citation methods.
Only certain types of material on the English Wikipedia are required to have an inline citation. There is no requirement to provide a citation for every sentence, because multiple sentences may be supported by the same footnote. For advice on which material should be cited, see the guidelines on When you must use inline citations, the Good article criteria and When to cite. For advice on how to organize and format bibliographic citations, see the guideline on Citing sources and examples of Citation templates.
Footnotes are created using the Cite.php
software extension. This extension adds the HTML-like elements <ref>...</ref>
, <references />
and <references>...</references>
. The elements are also used in a number of templates; for example, it is becoming more common to use {{reflist}} rather than <references />
as it can style the reference list.
Overview[ସମ୍ପାଦନା]
ଛାଞ୍ଚ:VE documentation The Footnotes system shows two elements on the page:
- A Footnote marker is displayed in the article's content as a bracketed, superscripted number, letter, or word. Examples shown respectively are: [1] [a] [Note 1]. This footnote label is linked to the full footnote. Clicking on the footnote marker jumps the page down to the footnote and highlights the citation. Hovering over a footnote marker will, depending on the user's settings, show a pop-up box containing the footnote.
- A Footnote displays the full citation for the source. Together the footnotes are displayed in an ordered list wherever the reference list markup {{reflist}} is placed. Each entry begins with the footnote label in plain text. The entire reference list is formatted in a slightly smaller font.
- Each successive footnote label is automatically incremented. Thus the first footnote marker would be [1], the second would be [2] and so on. Custom labels are also incremented: [a][b][c], [Note 1] [Note 2] [Note 3].
- For a single use footnote, the label is followed by a caret (^) that is a backlink to the matching footnote marker. For example:
- If a named footnote is used in the text multiple times, then the footnote has multiple backlinks shown as letters:
- Clicking on the backlink or pressing backspace ← returns to the footnote marker.
Footnotes in action[ସମ୍ପାଦନା]
This is a footnote marker.[୧]
- ↑ This is a footnote that contains a citation or note.
Footnotes: the basics[ସମ୍ପାଦନା]
To create the footnote marker, determine the point in the page content where the marker is desired and enter the markup with the citation or note inside the <ref>...</ref>
tags. For example:
Markup | Renders as |
---|---|
This is page content.<ref>LibreOffice For Starters, First Edition, Flexible Minds, Manchester, 2002, p. 18</ref> {{reflist}} |
|
- The {{reflist}} template will be explained in the next section.
The content inside the <ref>...</ref>
will show in the reference list. The ref tags can be added anywhere a citation or note is needed. There must be content inside the tags, else an error will show.
Ref tags should follow any punctuation (usually a period), not precede it; see WP:REFPUNC. There should be no space between the punctuation and the tag:
Markup | Renders as |
---|---|
...text.<ref>Content of the reference</ref> {{reflist}} |
|
...text<ref>Content of the reference</ref>. {{reflist}} |
|
...text. <ref>Content of the reference</ref> {{reflist}} |
|
The content of the ref tags can be formatted using most wikimarkup or HTML markup, although techniques such as the pipe trick and template substitution will not work in footnotes. For example:
Markup | Renders as |
---|---|
This is page content.<ref>''LibreOffice For Starters'', First Edition, Flexible Minds, Manchester, 2002, p. 18</ref> {{reflist}} |
|
The ref tag content may also contain an internal or external link:
Markup | Renders as |
---|---|
This is page content.<ref>''[http://www.example.org LibreOffice For Starters]'', First Edition, Flexible Minds, Manchester, 2002, p. 18</ref> {{reflist}} |
This is page content.[୧]
|
URLs must begin with a supported URI scheme. http://
and https://
will be supported by all browsers; however, ftp://
, gopher://
, irc://
, ircs://
, mailto:
and news:
may require a plug-in or an external application and should normally be avoided. IPv6 host-names are currently not supported.
If URLs in citation template parameters contain certain characters, then they will not display and link correctly. Those characters need to be percent-encoded. For example, a space must be replaced by %20
. To encode the URL, replace the following characters with:
Character | space | " | ' | < | > | [ | ] | { | | | } |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Encoding | %20 | %22 | %27 | %3C | %3E | %5B | %5D | %7B | %7C | %7D |
Single apostrophes do not need to be encoded; however, unencoded multiples will be parsed as italic or bold markup. Single curly closing braces also do not need to be encoded; however, an unencoded pair will be parsed as the double closing braces for the template transclusion.
Reference lists: the basics[ସମ୍ପାଦନା]
Once any number of footnotes have been inserted into the content, the reference list must be generated. For the basic reference list, add {{reflist}} wherever the list is desired. Once the page is saved and viewed, the footnotes will be automatically generated and numbered and the reference list will be generated. The main reference list is placed in a separate section, usually titled "References", "Notes" or the like.
Markup | Renders as |
---|---|
This is page content.<ref>''LibreOffice For Starters'', First Edition, Flexible Minds, Manchester, 2002, p. 18</ref> ==References== {{reflist}} |
|
Notes
- In some cases, a page has more than one reference list. Until 2014, multiple uses of {{reflist}} on the same page required use of a
|close=
parameter; that bug has been fixed and the|close=
parameter may safely be removed. - When editing,
<references />
may be seen instead of {{reflist}}. This is valid, but<references />
does not offer the advanced features of {{reflist}}.
Footnotes: using a source more than once[ସମ୍ପାଦନା]
You can cite the same source more than once on a page by using named footnotes. The syntax to define a named footnote is:
<ref name="name">content</ref>
To invoke the named footnote:
<ref name="name" />
Markup | Renders as |
---|---|
This is page content.<ref name=manchester2002>''LibreOffice for Starters'', First Edition, Flexible Minds, Manchester, 2002, p. 18</ref> This is more content.<ref name=manchester2002 /> {{reflist}} |
|
The actual name used can be almost anything, but it is recommended that it have a connection to the citation or note. A common practice is to use the author-year or publisher-year for the reference name. This helps editors remember the name, by associating it with the information that is visible to the reader.
Note that the footnote labels are incremented in the order they are used, and that they use the same label when reused, thus the labels can seem out of order:
Markup | Renders as |
---|---|
This is starter content.<ref name=manchester2002>''LibreOffice for Starters'', First Edition, Flexible Minds, Manchester, 2002, p. 18</ref> This is expert content.<ref name=lexington2004>''OpenOffice for Experts'', Lexington, 2004, p. 18</ref> And more starter content.<ref name=manchester2002 /> And more expert content.<ref name=lexington2004 /> {{reflist}} |
|
When using both names and groups, the syntax is:
<ref name=name group=groupname>Content</ref>
Care should be taken when deleting references to avoid creating a cite error. See Avoiding common mistakes
Reference lists: columns[ସମ୍ପାଦନା]
When using {{reflist}}, the list can be split into columns.
By setting the width in em, the number of columns will automatically be adjusted to the width of the display.
For example:
Markup | Renders as |
---|---|
Lorem ipsum.<ref>Source name.</ref> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.<ref>Source name.</ref> ==References== {{reflist|20em}} |
|
There is no hard rule on the column width to use, but some major practices include:
- One column (default): Where there are only a few footnotes; see Silver State Arena (23:05, 28 December 2012)
- 30em: Where there are a number of footnotes; see 1941 Texas hurricane (14:15, 8 February 2012)
- 20em: Where Shortened footnotes are used; see NBR 224 and 420 Classes (13:32, 1 August 2011).
List-defined references[ସମ୍ପାଦନା]
Some or all of the footnotes can also be defined within the reference section/list, and invoked in the page content. This keeps those citations in one central location and avoids cluttering the text (and any infobox). This is purely a source code change – the actual display of the citation in the text to a reader is unaffected. For a more detailed evaluation of this method, see WP:LDRHOW. The syntax is:
{{reflist|refs= <ref name=name1>Content</ref> <ref name=name2>Content</ref> <ref name=name...n>Content</ref> }}
or, alternatively,
<references> <ref name=name1>Content</ref> <ref name=name2>Content</ref> <ref name=name...n>Content</ref> </references>
The footnote markers are included as usual for a named footnote. For example:
Markup | Renders as |
---|---|
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.<ref name=LazyDog /> Amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes.<ref name=Jukeboxes /> How razorback-jumping frogs can level six piqued gymnasts.<ref name=JumpingFrogs /> ==References== {{reflist| refs= <ref name=Jukeboxes>This is the jukeboxes reference.</ref> <ref name=LazyDog>This is the lazy dog reference.</ref> <ref name=JumpingFrogs>This is the jumping frogs reference.</ref> }} |
|
The references will be numbered, and appear in the output, in the order that they are first referred to in the content, regardless of their order within the list. All references in reference list must be referenced in the content, otherwise an error message will be shown.