Help:Citation merging

Usage
Sometimes the article is more readable if multiple citations are bundled into a single footnote. For example, when there are multiple sources for a given sentence, and each source applies to the entire sentence, the sources can be placed at the end of the sentence, like this. Or they can be bundled into one footnote at the end of the sentence or paragraph, like this.

Bundling is also useful if the sources each support a different portion of the preceding text, or if the sources all support the same text. Bundling has several advantages:


 * It helps readers and other editors see at a glance which source supports which point, maintaining text–source integrity;
 * It avoids the visual clutter of multiple clickable footnotes inside a sentence or paragraph;
 * It avoids the confusion of having multiple sources listed separately after sentences, with no indication of which source to check for each part of the text, such as this.
 * It makes it less likely that inline citations will be moved inadvertently when text is re-arranged, because the footnote states clearly which source supports which point.

Bundling has the following disadvantages:
 * It requires that several sources are collected together at one point in the text, breaking the link between which piece of text is supported by which source. This damages text–source integrity;
 * If a piece of article text is re-arranged into another paragraph, sources have to be extracted from the bundling to move them to the new location. This also means that every source in the bundle has to be re-examined to ensure that the new text is still accurately supported.
 * If any of the sources in the bundle is re-used elsewhere in the text, the citation cannot be implemented by using named references or List-defined references. This increases the citation clutter within the wiki-text.

When formatting multiple citations in a footnote, there are several layouts available, as illustrated below. Within a given article, only a single layout should be used.

Syntax
There are 3 main layouts for merging/bundling multiple citations:

List with bullets
A bulleted list can be placed into a reference using the standard syntax with asterisks (*). If the reference starts with a bulleted list item, it will be pushed down one row. After the first citation, each bullet citation must be written on a new line.

{{markup
 * The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

List without bullets
To comply with the accessibility guidelines, use multiref or multiref2. Using the HTML line break tag will create problems for screen readers. The general unbulleted list templates like plainlist or unbulleted list) will not cause accessibility issues but may not display with correct formatting within reference tags.

Template:multiref, a shortcut for unbulleted list citebundle, indents bundled citations: {{markup
 * The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

Solid paragraph
{{markup
 * The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

Using the r (referencing) template
It is also possible to bundle multiple citations into one entry while still defining and invoking them individually using the r template. This would not normally be used to combine unrelated citations (unless in form of a footnote rather than a citation utilizing the group parameter), but it is sometimes used to combine different editions of the same work or similar closely related information. Either way, it is possible to define them all in one go (possibly as a list-defined reference) and invoke them several times (possibly with different page parameters, or to define the citations individually and combine them through the annotation system of template r. The following examples illustrate the latter form:

{{markup
 * Bullet format
 * The sun is pretty big,{{r|n=R1|r=For the sun's size, see Miller, Edward. The Sun. Academic Press, 2005, p. 1.}} but the moon is not so big.{{r|n=R1|a=* For the moon's size, see Brown, Rebecca. "Size of the Moon," Scientific American, 51(78):46.}} The sun is also{{r|n=R1|a=* For the sun's heat, see Smith, John. The Sun's Heat. Academic Press, 2005, p. 2.}} quite hot.{{r|n=R1|a=* {{Cite news|url=https://www.space.com/14725-moon-temperature-lunar-days-night.html|title=What's the Temperature on the Moon?|work=Space.com|access-date=2018-08-09}}}}