Help:Footnotes

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Notes gathered at a single position

Note: This method will only work if you have installed the Cite Extension.

This method gathers the notes at a single position marked with the <references/> tag. If used multiple times, only the first works.

<ref>Reference text</ref>
Produces a reference mark linking to the reference text, provided that the tag <references/> mentioned below is present on the page.
<ref name="id">Reference text</ref>
Ditto; also assigns a name to the reference text; the quotes are only needed if id contains spaces or special characters.
<ref name="id"/>
Produces a reference mark linking to a reference text defined before.
<references/>
Inserts a list of reference texts, each preceded by a list of links to the positions in the page linking to the text; this applies for all texts inside <ref> tags in the wikitext of the page.

Multiple insertion of the same reference

mw:Extension:Cite:

References may be cited more than once using <ref name="id"/>. On the Edit page, this is placed at the first insertion point of citation:

<ref name="Perry">Perry's Handbook, Sixth Edition, McGraw-Hill Co., 1984.</ref>

This is placed at the second insertion point of citation:

<ref name="Perry"/>

This is placed at the third insertion point of citation:

<ref name="Perry"/> ..... and so forth for further insertion points

Single insertion of a reference

For the single insertion of a reference, the "name" parameter is not needed. On the Edit page, this is placed at the insertion point of citation:

<ref>Excel For Dummies, First Edition, Hungry Minds, Inc., 1980.</ref>

To have the reference depend on a parameter, use e.g.:

{{#tag:ref|...{{tc}}...{{{1}}}...}} giving <ref>...in...{{{1}}}...</ref>

What is produced at the points of insertion

The <ref> tags in the main text are converted to auto-numbered superscripts, like this:

The only reference to Excel For Dummies.<ref>Excel For Dummies, First Edition, Hungry Minds, Inc., 1980.</ref> The first reference to Perry's Handbook.<ref name="Perry">Perry's Handbook, Sixth Edition, McGraw-Hill Co., 1984.</ref> The second reference to Perry's Handbook.<ref name="Perry"/> The third reference to Perry's Handbook.<ref name="Perry"/> Help:Footnotes/demo/ref

Clicking on a numbered superscript takes you straight to the text of the corresponding footnote or reference.

Producing the reference or footnote list

The <references/> tag is expanded to show the text of the footnotes or references against their corresponding numbers, like this:

<references/>

For single citations, clicking on the caret (^) takes you to the point of citation in the main text.

For multiple citations, the links back to the main text can be distinguished in various ways, depending on MediaWiki:Cite references link many format and MediaWiki:Cite references link many format backlink labels: the default is to have double-numerical superscripts, e.g. 2.0, 2.1, .. for the second reference, while on Meta and the English Wikipedia we have letters instead of a second number (a instead of 0, b instead of 1, c instead of 2, etc.), and without repeating the reference number. Clicking on a link takes you to the corresponding citation in the main text.

You may also use a slightly different format if desired, like this:

== Example reference section ==
<div class="references-small"> <references /> </div>

to generate the example section on help:Footnotes/example 1.

Notes on the Cite.php method

Clicking on the blue superscript 1.0 causes the screen display to scroll back up to the point where the first reference to Perry's Handbook was inserted. Clicking on the blue superscript 1.1 causes the screen display to scroll back up to the point where the second reference to Perry's Handbook was inserted. Clicking on the blue superscript 1.2 causes the screen display to scroll back up to the point where the the third reference to Perry's Handbook was inserted ... and so forth.

Clicking on any vertical arrow (↑) that has no associated superscripts causes the screen display to scroll back up to the point where that single-use references was inserted.

Notes at independent positions

The systems below require a note tag with id for each note, but they allow the position of each footnote text to be chosen independently. For example, footnotes in a table or section can be put at the bottom of the table or section.

Ref and note template

System using Template:Ref and Template:Note:

Template:Evd

A disadvantage of this method is that references to the same note appear with different numbers, and that from the note there is only a link back to the first reference to it, e.g.:

Template:Evd.

The latter disadvantage is overcome by using multiple ref/note pairs, each with a different name, e.g.:

Not many words in the English language use two consecutive "u"s. There is one word^[1] that is both rather empty^[2] and also sucks^[3].

Note: vacuum1

Note: vacuum2

Note: vacuum3
The word is vacuum.

However, this method has advantage over <ref> in that, it can split the footnotes into each section, while <references/> does put all footnotes in one place, and can't be split.