Help:Reftags
This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. |
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 wikitext function "{{#tag:ref|...}}" to generate the text "<ref>...</ref>" and allow direct use of wp:subst'ing of templates to embed equivalent markup inside a footnote.
Defining a reftag element[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]
When citing different pages in a single source,[1] a named ref can be followed by a {{R}} template. Given a ref like "<ref name="author1990">book</ref>", the ref author1990 can be reused, now using a different page number, say 53. This subsequent ref {{R|author1990|p=53}} will show the same numbered subscript, with a suffix of a colon and, in this case 53, the page number.[1]:53 This format allows the reader to click to the reference section, and then click on other references from the same source.
Rather than define hundreds of footnotes in a single list, various reftags could split to some named groupings, such as 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 avoid excessive apostrophes or quotation marks.[fn 3]
Defining a reftag function[edit]
Rather than using an element "<ref>text</ref>", an alternate method is to use the wikitext function tag:ref, as "{{#tag:ref|...text...}}" to define the contents of a footnote.
Examples:
- Using "{{#tag:ref|Example of tag:ref function}}" will show numbered subscript: [2] and list footnote "Example of tag:ref function" under the References.
- Using named "{{#tag:ref|Named reftag function xx1|name=xx1}}" will show numbered subscript: [3] and list footnote "Named reftag function xx1" under the References below. The footnote name 'xx1' then can be reused by putting "<ref name=xx1/>" at various points[3] in the text.[3]
Footnotes (fn)[edit]
References[edit]
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