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 {{tl|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)