Help talk:Footnotes

Ref name suggestion?

I wonder if it would be useful to suggest that names for named refs incorporate the author's last name and the year, similar to author-date referencing? I have seen cases that suggest new editors may occasionally grasp for a suitable name, and I think this would be useful guidance. And I know from experience that editing is a little easier when broken named refs carry at least a smidgen of information about the source. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

We can certainly add it as a practice. I generally use author-year, work-year or work-date. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:48, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Reusing a common partial reference in several references? (different page numbers)

So, is there no way to have multiple references to the same references but with a slight variation, like on the page number? --Chealer (talk) 05:03, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

See Help:Footnotes#Citing one book repeatedly with different page numbers. That needs some polishing, but it covers it pretty well. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

That describes the use of {{rp}}, which is horrendous. (And I think inherently unpolishable.)

The problem posed (multiple use of references) is not new, and is solved: a single "full reference" for the source itself, and "short" (or "shortened") citations for specific passages. And the best way we have on WP for implementing the latter is {{Harv}}. We should work up better documentation for using it. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:47, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that {{rp}} is bad, because the information about which work to look at is in one spot, and the name of the work is in a different spot. With {{Harv}}, short information about which work to look in, which will be sufficient by the time you have obtained access to the work, which page to look on, and the Wikipedia article text are all together. With footnotes and short citations, the short info about the work and the page number are together. With {{rp}}, you better have some scraps of paper handy to write the page number down. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:01, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Documentation exists, see Help:Shortened footnotes and WP:CITESHORT. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:31, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I know of five ways to include page numbers or other in-source locators:

• Create a separate footnote for each citation and include the page number.
• Use shortened footnotes.
• Use named references with {{rp}} to create an in-text page locator.
• Use list-defined references with {{r}} to create an in-text page locator.
• Use parenthetical references.

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:01, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Help:Shortened footnotes shows how to manually format a link, and how to use {{sfn}} (which can get complicated); but doesn't even mention {{Harv}}. WP:CITESHORT has links to {{harvnb}} and related documentation, but only shows a purely textual form (no links) of doing a short citation. So strictly speaking, yes, there is documentation of Harv, but not in a readily findable or friendly form. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:10, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:HARV. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:20, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

{{Harv}} and similar templates are used in Parenthetical referencing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:37, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:HARV points to WP:Parenthetical referencing. Which both misconceives what "parenthetical" means, and confounds the use of the {{Harv}} templates with "parenthetical referencing". (Harv templates default to the "Harvard style" of author-date referencing, which can be used "parenthetically", but generally is not.) While it does do a good job of explaining the author-date system, about all it does in showing how to use Harv templates is two (?) examples and some links. At any rate, the direction provided above was not to WP:HARV, but to Help:Footnotes#Citing one book repeatedly with different page numbers, which uses {{rp}}. As I said before, we should work up better documentation. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:23, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

How can you tell that "Harv templates default to the 'Harvard style' of author-date referencing, which can be used 'parenthetically', but generally is not"? Jc3s5h (talk) 00:58, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

  By examination of the results? As to defaulting to identifying references by author-date: that's what they do, for both the tag put into the text ("Smith, 2000") and in building the link id (the "citeref") to the actual reference. As to overriding this default: I often do so with maps or other sources that are better known by a name not the author's. (See here.) As to not necessarily "parenthetically": that's what the other variants are for (e.g.: {{Harvnb}}, where "nb" stands for "no braces" [parentheses]). Though I sometimes use Harv links in the main text, I believe they are generally used in the text of footnotes, and there almost always without the "braces".

  The important thing to note is that "Harv" in the context of templates is primarily a way of creating links. They default to the Harvard style of identifying references by author and date, which is mistakenly termed parenthetical referencing. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:41, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not too happy with the {{rp}} solution either (it doesn't look so good on the page) but I'm trying to get a handle on which overall system is best, and all I'm saying is that I have no attachment to the rp-stuff if people here (who know more about referencing & citations than me) want to change it.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:31, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I've been experimenting with different approaches to documentation. Check my Citation primer and let me know on my talk page if that helps. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:23, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Terms

Since various discussions have resulted in no consensus as to terminology, I am just going to go with whatever occurs in this help page first and use them across the board on all help and template pages. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Citation

Notes giving bibliographic information about each cited source.

Content

Text in the body of the article.

Explanatory notes

Supplemental information that is not a source but expands on the content.

Footnote backlink

An HTML link from the footnote list citation to the footnote marker.

Footnote label

The alphanumeric character shown in the footnote marker and the footnote list.

Footnote link

An HTML link from the footnote marker to the citation or shortened footnote.

Footnote list

A list of citations. The main footnote list appears near the end of the page; separate footnote lists may include explanatory notes, table legends, notes and the like.

Footnote markers

The element placed in the text that contains a link to the citation that supports the preceding content. Formatted as a superscripted alphanumeric character (footnote label) enclosed by brackets with a link (footnote link) to the citation.

Source

Media that supports statements made in the content and meets the reliable sources guidelines.

Discussion

• Comments - (1) can you provide links to prior discussions on this topic? I seem to recall there was a similar discussion 1 or 2 months ago; (2) The list above should include the term "Footnote" since that is a fundamental concept, and this is Help:Footnotes; (3) You should (or maybe you did alredady) put a notice on WP:CITING SOURCES and other related places pointing to this discussion; and (4) if your intention is to make this a widespread naming convention; you should probably do an RfC; otherwise the only input will be from the handful of editors that monitor Help:Footnotes. --Noleander (talk) 13:51, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Good points. Let me work on that. I should also round up other terms used and where. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:54, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

... (5) the definition of "citation" is a bit circular, since it contains the word "cited" ... You should define it without resorting to "cited"; (6) if your intention is to make this a widely used glossary, you'll need to define "inline citation" and distinguish it from other kinds of citations. (7) may want to define "short(ened) citation" since that term is used a lot in the WP pages. --Noleander (talk) 14:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

  Noleander may be thinking of Help_talk:Footnotes/Archive_1#Glossary, the attempt back in November to define some terms.

  Ed got ahead of me here, as I was going to reopen the discussion, but taking on one term at a time. We should give careful consideration to the proper venue. It might be easier to start with a small crowd, see what can be hammered out, then extend to a broader group. Or not. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:47, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

P.S. I commented at WT:Parenthetical_referencing#Move_to_Help_2 that building a map of all the citation related topics might be useful. It could also be useful for determining where to best discuss terms. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:57, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List-defined reference how-to guide

I just stumbled across Wikipedia:List-defined reference how-to guide. Should we merge here or use it as the main page for LDR? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:42, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

It's a specific method, it will be less confusing to not mix in in with other methods. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Footnote ref. at beginning of page

Is there ever a reason to place a footnote reference number at the beginning of a page? I'm trying to understand the changes to List of Weatherman members without making it worse. I took footnote one to be an anomaly that had been misplaced and I moved it to the most logical place--the opening statement of the article, but this has been reverted. I think the footnote may have been intended to cover the article's general topic--and that it was intended as a footnote to the article's title. It gets more complicated, but I thought I would ask this preliminary question first before taking it to the talk page of the article or of the user who reverted my change. Thanks. SeoMac (talk) 18:31, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

It looks like a new editor is trying to add a reference (for the whole list) but is not familiar with footnoting in WP. I'll post an offer of help on his/her Talk page. I also reverted the change. --Noleander (talk) 18:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Announcing template:efn

We've created a an "explanatory footnote template" {{efn}} and a template {{notelist}} to streamline and dumb-proof the process of creating a separate section for explanatory footnotes. Have a look. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 19:50, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Documented at Shortened footnotes. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:13, 24 February 2012 (UTC)