Help:Reftags
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This page is a how-to guide.
It details processes or procedures of some aspect or aspects of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines.
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This page, Help:Reftags, explains the use of the reftag element, "<ref>...</ref>" for defining reference wp:footnotes, as displayed by using a "{{Reflist}}" template to list the footnotes. A reftag can also be defined by using function "{{#tag:ref|...}}" to generate the text "<ref>...</ref>" and allow use of wp:subst'ing of templates to embed equivalent markup inside a footnote.
Defining a reftag[edit]
The general format is "<ref>text</ref>" for a simple reftag footnote. However reftags can have a name="xx" to define a footnote to be reused on a page by named ref, <ref name="xx"/>, as when citing the same webpage at several spots in the article text. There can be more than 3,000 reftag footnotes defined on a page, but usually there are less than a hundred.[fn 1]
Rather than define hundreds of footnotes in a single list, various reftags could split to some named groupings, by using "<ref group="gg">...</ref>" to collect those footnotes into group name "gg" as displayed by "<references group="gg"/>".[fn 2] For example, a common tactic is to define footnote group "fn" which shows each link as "[fn 9]" for the 9th footnote in the group="fn". A group name can be multiple words in ".." or in apostrophes (group='set xx yy'), but a single-word name can omit the quotemarks or apostrophes (as: group=fn). Hence, many group names are typically one-word labels, to omit excessive apostrophes or quotation marks.[fn 3]
Footnotes (fn)[edit]
- ^ A reftag formats extremely fast, but users can become overwhelmed when more than 500 footnotes on a page.
- ^ This is a sample footnote in group=fn.
- ^ This footnote uses apostrophes in name group='fn'.
See also[edit]
- wp:Advanced footnote formatting – special layouts
- wp:Citing sources – how to format footnotes or bibliography
- wp:Reliable sources (wp:RS) – about reputable references
- wp:Find sources – how to hunt for quality source documents
- Template:Cite web – most-common cite wp:template
- Template:Cite book – to link a book/chapter or volume as source reference